Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for his courageous motion.

It is late in the workweek, Mr. Speaker, for us on Capitol Hill, and things tend to get a little blurry for Members of Congress when we put in a full, 3-day week. So I am going to try to unpack this a little bit, as I strongly endorse the motion by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) which simply structurally affirms the idea of using income thresholds or means testing as a way of controlling costs in the Medicare prescription drug legislation that is currently being considered by a conference committee in the House and Senate.

This is not a radical and new idea, Mr. Speaker. In fact, according to our information, not only was means testing included in the catastrophic elements of the bill that passed the House, but also when the U.S. Senate signaled its support for means testing in June, there was an amendment that was drafted and sponsored by Senators Nickles and Feinstein. It prevailed on a test vote. Some 59 Senators indicated preliminary support for means testing as a way of controlling the extraordinary cost that we will place on working Americans in the future. Remember, entitlements are paid for by payroll taxes by working Americans. But because Senator Ted Kennedy, in effect, we are told in media outlets, raised the possibility of a filibuster, the amendment was not considered and was withdrawn.

So the idea that the Flake motion considers, Mr. Speaker, and that is brought so respectfully before all the Members of this body, but most especially the hard-working Members of our leadership team, is an idea that had broad support in this Chamber and arguably, by media accounts, in the Senate.

And I must tell my colleagues, I have great respect for the gentleman from Ohio. His passion and his eloquence on this floor is always memorable. But rather than reflecting on the remarks he just made, I would rather reflect on the motion that was debated in the hour prior to this one, which, as I sat on the back row of the Chamber, Mr. Speaker, was all about how the Medicare prescription drug benefit was too small, it did not spend enough, the

Democrat motion to instruct conferees argued, in sum. And I submit to my colleagues that the debate we heard last hour is a preview of the debate that will follow on the floor of this Congress every year if we create a universal drug benefit, a new entitlement in Medicare, a one- size-fits-all prescription drug benefit. It will, as we hear in every other entitlement, Mr. Speaker, it will simply be one other subject that our friends on the other side of the aisle will come into this Chamber and argue is insufficiently funded, and it will grow and it will grow and it will grow.

I believe in my own mind that the opposition by some to means testing here is because they know that if we create a prescription drug benefit that is based on the income of Americans, that it is, therefore, by definition not an entitlement. If we say that the person who owns the limousine and the person who drives the limousine are entitled to the same amount from the Federal Government in free prescription drugs every year, we have created an entitlement. If we create a difference there, we simply create a manageable government benefit. The Flake motion contemplates that, and I endorse it strongly; and the marketplace in need here also endorses it strongly.

I have to tell my colleagues, I do about 50 town hall meetings a year in my district; and I have become persuaded, Mr. Speaker, that there are seniors who struggle, in some cases, in heart-wrenching manners with the cost of prescription drugs. Statistics show us that nearly 24 percent of seniors have no access to drug coverage, and approximately 5 percent of seniors have out-of-pocket prescription costs of more than $4,000 per year. I would, as conservative as I am, and I would dare say even many of my colleagues would, be prepared to support the kind of program that President Bush called for to begin with: a program, we will call it Plan B, which would focus resources at the point of the need and leave the prescription drug coverage that 76 percent of Americans already enjoy untouched.

The reasons for this include the fiscal realities that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) cited: the initial 10-year cost projected at $400 billion a year, from 214 to 223, though the numbers go up to a projected $772 billion, adding $2.6 trillion indebtedness to Medicare, a number almost the size of the national debt today. And why is that? It is because, Mr. Speaker, that there are 37 million people today entitled to benefits under Medicare; and by the time my baby boomer generation gets done retiring in the 2020s, there will be over 70 million Americans eligible for benefits in Medicare. Means testing and income-related testing is the only way of defeating the creation of a massive new Federal entitlement. I rise today to endorse it as a principle, as a concept, and as an idea whose time has come.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Clinton's Medicare administrator, issued inadvertently a warning about the work that we do here, saying that what Congress had contemplated would be ``the biggest expansion of government health benefits since the Great Society.'' And so it would, unless we bring Republican principles of limited government and fairness to bear on the challenges facing many seniors; unless we create a program built on that principle expressed by Abraham Lincoln when he said that government should ``never do for a man what he could and should do for himself.'' That is simply a principle of limited government, and it is also a principle of fiscal responsibility, and it is the principle underpinning the motion to instruct conferees brought today by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

I would submit to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that compassionate conservatism is about focusing solutions at the point of the need. Let us help our seniors near the poverty level with urgent and sufficient prescription coverage. Let us bring about reforms in Medicare so it is there for the future, without placing an undue burden on our children and grandchildren; and let us otherwise do no harm to the private sector foundation of the greatest health care system in the world.

For this reason, I strongly support the Flake motion to instruct conferees. I strongly support controlling costs through income thresholds on coverage, means testing, as it has come to be known; and I strongly support that principle for which our party was rewarded the ability to lead this institution, the principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility that I believe would be advanced by maintaining the means testing that was in the House bill; and if I can also offer, Mr. Speaker, expanding that means testing throughout the course of this benefit, so that we can truly focus the resources on those who need it most.

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for a vigorous, embracing debate, Mr. Speaker.

Apart from some of the class warfare rhetoric, I want to concede a particular point, that the introduction, as the Flake motion suggests, into the prescription drug benefit of income related standards of means testing is precisely about destroying the creation of a new entitlement. It is precisely that, Mr. Speaker. Because despite the fact that we are hearing our friends on the other side of the aisle speak with great generosity about the middle class and even the upper class today, it will not be any of us in this room, judging from the relative age as I look around this Chamber, who will pay for this entitlement, but it will be people like my 10-year-old daughter, Charlotte.

Sometimes God has a sense of humor, Mr. Speaker. The very day I was called upon to vote to create the largest new entitlement since 1965 was my daughter Charlotte's 10th birthday. I started the morning stuffing a pinata at 6 a.m. for her little-girl birthday party. It was a great day.

And it really was that experience that emboldened me to take the stand that I took in voting against this measure and to take the stand that I take today with Mr. Flake in saying that we must, almost regardless of the politics and the demagogic rhetoric that will be foisted on us from many quarters, we must do right by Charlotte. Because it will be Charlotte in 20 years, hopefully married to a good and Godly man, raising my grandchildren, who will be paying two and three times the payroll taxes that we pay today to pay for the benefits that we are on the verge of creating, Mr. Speaker. It is that plain and that simple. And to do that by taxing young Charlotte's family to support benefits to people who could and should provide for themselves, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, is unconscionable.

So, Mr. Speaker, I support the Flake motion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me; and more importantly, I thank the gentleman for hosting this critical Special Order on the eve of some extraordinarily good news for the right to life in America.

As the gentleman from Minnesota just suggested, it is astonishing to think how long it has taken this Congress to address this issue, literally first coming to the floor of the 104th Congress on November 1, 1995. That was the day that Congress first considered the Partial- Birth Abortion Ban Act. And here we stand in October of 2003, 8 years almost to the day since; and we

are on the eve of this legislation actually becoming law, passing a conference report that will go to a President who, unlike the past administration, will not veto this ban of this barbaric procedure, but will sign it with the humility and the gratitude of the American people in his heart.

Mr. Speaker, partial-birth abortion is truly an antiseptic word to describe a barbaric procedure, and I believe it is important as we begin this conversation today to reflect however briefly on the barbarism of this procedure, aided as we are by some less-than-graphic images, but nonetheless effective.

What is described in these images, hopefully tastefully, for families that may be watching across the country, happens several thousand times a year. Healthy mothers carrying healthy babies in the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy undergo a procedure which has come to be known as partial-birth abortion. As is depicted in these images, a doctor inserting the forceps forcibly causes the unborn child into a breech position in the birth canal, feet first for lay people like me.

After that with the assistance of the forceps, the child is then forcibly pulled out, delivered breech through the birth canal out of the mother by his or her leg, and once the child is removed from the birth canal, at least until the base of the head is available, the procedure is quite horrible in and of itself, but it becomes fitting to refer to it as barbaric from there, for here, as I emphasize, Mr. Speaker, children who in most cases would be able to live outside the womb, literally inches from birth, are then held in the birth canal, stabbed at the base of the back of their skull and the contents of their brains forcefully removed by a suction vacuum device. Once the head is collapsed, the remains of the unborn child are removed.

It is no small wonder that that liberal lion, the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, referred to this procedure as ``near infanticide.'' Tonight, I know we will hear from many of our colleagues, and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) who chairs this Special Order, we will hear arguments about constitutionality and about why this law which will come to this Chamber tomorrow and go to the President's desk within days is superior to laws which have been challenged successfully at the State level at our own Supreme Court.

But I would like to begin our Special Order tonight with none of those arguments, none of the discussion about constitutionality or endorsements, or even that the American Medical Association said that ``this procedure is never the only appropriate procedure, never medically necessary.'' I would rather begin tonight by suggesting that what is not arguable to the overwhelming majority of the American public is that this practice is inherently, morally wrong.

What is not arguable is the practice of delivering an unborn child feet first and holding it in the birth canal while the back of its head is stabbed with a suction device is evil. That is not arguable. What we will render unlawful tomorrow and then with the President's signature is what virtually every American knows in their heart is evil and morally wrong, and so the polls attest to that moral conscience of the American people.

As I yield back to the gentleman, I am mindful of that Bible verse that whatsoever you do for the least of these, you do for me, the Lord tells us. And I submit what we will do in this Congress tomorrow, banning this barbaric procedure known as partial-birth abortion, is the least we can do for the least of these.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this critical issue on the eve of such an important legislative accomplishment.

Mr. Speaker, in the sixth Congressional District of Indiana there are so many warm-hearted people doing good things. These exceptional individuals who have a passion for doing good deeds are Hoosier heroes. Hoosier heroes because they reiterate that one person can make a difference through dedicating their lives to helping others.

Murray Wilson of Albany, Indiana is a Hoosier hero. Murray has dedicated the past twelve years of his life to raising support for local charities in the district. It is not often that someone, such as Murray takes time out of their day to work tirelessly helping others.

Murray spends countless hours writing letters, rounding up pledges, participating in walks, and raising support for his drives. Many well- honored charities have benefited from Murray's dedication, such as the March of Dimes, American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the list goes on. Thus far this year Murray is one of the top fundraisers in the state of Indiana for the March of Dimes.

This summer he was able to meet Maggie Peterson from the television show Andy Griffith who was touched by Murray's generosity and sponsored him $100 for the March of Dimes drive.

Murray Wilson's giving spirit continues to make a difference through his actions. Soon, Hoosiers all across the state of Indiana will be able to read Murray's story, which is to be released this month by author Ray Rice, ``Indiana's Own, Stories From the Heart,'' describing 50 inspirational stories from Indiana's own award-winning television segment.

Mr. Speaker, Murray Wilson continues to strive to help others by reaching out and lending a helping hand. And for that reason Murray Wilson of Albany, Indiana, is a Hoosier hero.

Mr. Speaker, Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a historic success, a military victory of astonishing proportions in its decisiveness as well as its compassion on the civilian population. In the next 2 weeks, the President of the United States has come to Congress to ask for some $87 billion to continue the work, and well we should. Extending every dollar to make sure our troops have the resources they need to get the job done and come home safe should be Congress' top priority. But with regard to the investment in civil society, the reconstruction dollars, some $20.3 billion, I rise respectfully, Mr. Speaker, to say that we should ask the people of Iraq and their future generations to partner with us, to structure reconstruction dollars as a loan, and give the Iraqi people the opportunity to invest along with us in their own peace and stability and democracy as full partners in their future.

Mr. Speaker, I rise at the end of a week of activity here on Capitol Hill to do nothing less than to begin a process and an effort that I hope will be a part of the fabric of my career for however long I have the privilege of serving in the United States House of Representatives.

I rise very simply, Mr. Speaker, to make the case for life; to make the arguments, philosophical, intellectual, moral and historical, on this blue and gold carpet, on a regular basis, for the sanctity of human life.

My inspiration, oddly enough, Mr. Speaker, for this series, was just mentioned by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) in his remarks immediately preceding mine. It is almost uncanny to me to have heard it. For my inspiration in rising today on the House floor is none other than a former Member of this body who served as a Member of Congress from 1827 until his death in 1848.

Prior to being a Member of the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams was President of the United States, and his father President before him. But, remarkably, after one term in Congress, John Quincy Adams felt compelled, Mr. Speaker, to be elected to Congress from the State of Massachusetts and to come to this place. And more than any other purpose, it is clear as one studies his speeches and pronouncements on this floor, that he was a man deeply committed to the abolition of slavery in America.

Just as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) reflected, it is reported that oftentimes on a weekly basis or more throughout the nearly 20 years that John Quincy Adams served as a Member of this Congress, in a Chamber, as you know, Mr. Speaker, just down the hall, the great, grand old man and former President would come, history records, and bring his papers with him and make the moral and the intellectual and the historical and even the Biblical case against slavery in America.

We are even told that some of his colleagues at the time during the course of those two decades actually tried to change the procedural rules of the House, because they thought it rather impolitic to have old Mr. Adams coming down and bringing up that difficult issue again. But he did it, and he did it well, and he did it without apology. And as I rise today to begin what I hope for however many years I serve in Congress to be a series on the case for life, I am inspired and magnetized by John Quincy Adams.

Now, many may say that John Quincy Adams, who perished, we are told, in the midst of a session of Congress, fell over backwards in his Chair, was carried into a waiting room where he died the next day, some may say that his death in 1848, long before slavery would vanish from this continent, proved that he had failed in his endeavor.

But God works in mysterious ways, Mr. Speaker, and I cannot help but feel to this day that at some time from heaven John Quincy Adams smiled down when he realized that on the back row of the Congress in which he gave those lectures arrived in the year 1847 a tall, lanky man from the State of Illinois who served for one term in Congress, and Abraham Lincoln would later reflect that the speeches on the abolition of slavery that he heard from the great man John Quincy Adams deeply impacted his thinking and his life. And when Abraham Lincoln would then run for the Senate in Illinois and lose, and then be propelled on that same issue to the Presidency, he, no doubt, as is all of our posterity, was in debt to the rantings of that old man.

And here is hoping that my rantings may cast seeds, somewhere, Mr. Speaker, whether in this Chamber or through the means whereby people observe what we do here, that some might reflect on the principles that we share over the course of this series on the case for life and be inspired by it, because it matters.

Despite the fact that ever since Roe v. Wade became law in 1973 America has looked across the street to the U.S. Supreme Court to define this business of the rightness and the legality of abortion, and despite the fact that, frankly, even in this Congress we pay scant attention to the issue, it, nevertheless, is a colossal issue about which our Nation must attend, for one reason and one reason only: 1.6 million abortions are performed in the United States each year. Ninety- one percent are performed during the first trimester, twelve or fewer weeks gestation. Nine percent are performed in the second trimester.

Approximately 1.5 million U.S. women with unwanted pregnancies choose abortion every year, and most are under the age of 25 years and unmarried. And as psychologists across America now reflect, post- abortion stress syndrome, which seems to viciously take hold of women at or around the age of menopause, where in many cases women are led into therapy because of a deep sense of remorse about decisions they made decades before, it is a decision that those 1.5 million women make not just for that day, but for many, Mr. Speaker, a decision that colors much of the rest of their life.

Approximately 6 million women in the United States become pregnant every year. About half of those pregnancies are unintended, and 1.5 million elect to terminate them with legal abortion.

Each year, more than 1 million U.S. teenagers become pregnant, and the teen pregnancy rate has moved in the last 30 years to truly startling statistics. Eighty percent of women having abortions are single, 60 percent are white, 35 percent are black, 82 percent of women having abortions are unmarried or separated, and almost half, this is almost incomprehensible to me, but statistics from Planned Parenthood's National Center for Health Statistics suggest that almost half of American women, 43 percent, will have an abortion sometime in their life. Yet, we rarely talk about it here. A procedure of deep physical and emotional and moral and perhaps even spiritual consequences reflected on through the millennia is scarcely talked about in the center of the most powerful government on Earth.

Today I would like to speak, if I may, about a few of the historical aspects of the case for life. Oftentimes, when I am standing before groups of young people, I will say, rather obliquely, that for roughly 3,000 years in Western Civilization, until 1973, it was the unanimous position of medical ethicists throughout Western Civilization that abortion was immoral and unethical. And I am always amazed at the startled look on children's faces. Because, of course, every student that I see in a classroom was born in the post Roe v. Wade America where abortion is a settled fact. It is a settled legal reality. But to begin with the realization that for 3 millennia through, if I can use the word, through the gestation of Western Civilization, there was, as Mother Teresa often reflected, that core principle that human life is sacred. Often rejected, even by nations and peoples in the midst of our civilization, nevertheless, the sanctity of human life rises out of the march of our civilization, almost like no other.

We all are familiar with the founding documents of this Nation that speak of certain unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, and among them are life. It is an astounding thing to consider. But what did our Founders think of when they thought of life? They were men who reflected on the ancients; they reflected on history. The Founders of this Nation, some of whom are remembered on the walls and carved in stone throughout this building, were truly learned men. So it is important when we think about a reference to the unalienable right to life, what did our Founders think about when they said life? What did they think of as human life? In the context of our common law and in the context of the history of the ancients or the Middle Ages, or even the early church fathers who so deeply

influenced the Founders of this country, it is a consistent, one after another element of the law in history that argues beyond a doubt that abortion was considered a deep moral offense.

In the Lex Cornelia 81 B.C., the Jurist Iulius Paulus applied a text of this law that applied to poisoners and those who dispensed drugs specifically intended to cause abortion, saying that whoever dispenses an abortion pill, regardless of its intention, the law read, set a bad example and was condemned to work in the mines in 81 B.C. One thinks of that story of a young girl who may have had medical complications just last week from having taken the pill RU486 and died. And one thinks of the wisdom of Lex Cornelia from 81 B.C., the dispensing of a pill and a poison that causes an abortion and its harm.

Cicero actually placed it beyond doubt that the offense of abortion was a capital offense punishable even by death. In the Persian Empire, criminal abortions were severely punished. And so it goes.

In fact, the Ephesian, Soranos, often described as the greatest ancient gynecologist from whom we obtain the word and the practice of gynecology were, as history records, deeply opposed to Rome's prevailing free abortion practice. Soranos found it necessary to think first of the life of the mother and resorted to an abortion when he thought the life of the mother was in danger, but it was otherwise unacceptable. At the time of Soranos, Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn until Christianity took root in the Roman Empire, and then it changed. And from that point forward, after the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, infanticide and abortion were treated as equally criminal acts, alongside murder.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the severe penalty for abortion remained in force in all countries of Europe well into the Middle Ages, and it was reflected in many of the writings. I think of John Calvin, one of the early church fathers and someone who deeply influenced the development of common law and Christian theological thinking. He said, John Calvin now, ``The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light,'' John Calvin wrote in the commentary in the Book of Exodus.

Truly astonishing words, but not at the time that he wrote them. To think of that time and to think of that context, what John Calvin wrote about, what the ancients embraced was what was common accepted law, and, of course, our own common law was given birth by those historical moorings.

As James S. Cole wrote in an essay entitled ``Abortion at Common Law,'' long before the settlement of the English colonies on this continent, the common law of England, that is, the law recognized as common to all Englishmen, defined abortion as a crime. In accord with the limits of biological knowledge of the day, it was believed that there was no life until what was known as ``quickening,'' when the movements of the baby could be discerned. Abortion was therefore declared by the earliest authorities a lesser crime than criminal homicide until quickening, and then it was a felony after quickening. Much later, in the 1600s, there was some hesitation to prosecute abortions in which a child died in the womb as opposed to those in which the baby was expelled before dying, because of the problems of proving that the act of beating the mother's abdomen or giving her a poison had caused the death of the child. However, there was no doubt that abortion of a woman who was either ``quick or great with child'' was unlawful.

In colonial America, abortions were prosecuted under the common law. After the Revolution, the new American States adopted the common law of England as the basis of their own law, including common law crimes. Within a generation, the independent States began to outgrow the English common law, and State legislatures increasingly defined crimes in their States. However, common law crimes survived until superseded by legislative enactment.

Although common law prohibitions on abortion were largely replaced over time with legislative enactments through the 19th century, there was never a gap in which the common law had anything other than a prohibition of abortion. Abortion was a crime during the hundreds of years before the founding of this Nation, and it remained a crime in every State at the beginning of our Nation and throughout the 19th century.

Until the advent of Roe v. Wade that, it is worth noting, struck down simultaneously those laws promulgated from the common law in all 50 States, abortion was considered a crime, a deep moral offense, and anathema to medical ethicists.

It is altogether appropriate to point out as well as we consider the ancients today, Mr. Speaker, that the Hippocratic Oath itself carved, depending on who you believe of the historians, and doctors will argue the point, but somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, the Hippocratic Oath authored by the great physician Hippocrates begins in many versions with the phrase, ``First, do no harm,'' and in its most classic versions will make reference to abortion; that it was altogether and always inappropriate for the healer ever to end human life, either born human life or unborn human life. It is contained in the Hippocratic Oath. It was what it meant to be a doctor, that you heal; your charge was to heal human beings. And so the bright line, to put it in modern terminology, Mr. Speaker, the eight-lane superhighway in Hippocrates' mind, it seemed to me, was that the doctor does not kill human beings. Doctors do not end human life. And for 4,000 years, the advance of medical ethics, and every doctor in my State of Indiana and every doctor who takes an oath throughout the Western world raises their hand, in many cases, and takes the Hippocratic Oath.

Now, the edited version oftentimes does not include reference to abortion, but it still includes that line, ``first, do no harm.'' And it is why today so many doctors in America refuse as a professional decision to perform abortions. They simply choose not to be a part of it. In fact, there seems to be some evidence in the medical community of a diminishing availability of abortion in America, because men and women that wear the white smocks and the green smocks of physicians are less and less interested in that fundamental compromise of their mission and their ministry as a healer, according to the Hippocratic Oath.

I spoke of the English common law, which specifically forbade abortion. It did, in some cases, as I mentioned, treat it as a felony and, in other cases, treated it as a misdemeanor; but in all cases it was immoral, wrong, and illegal. Blackstone, who wrote, as I learned in law school, the famous Blackstone Commentaries at the founding of the country; it can be accurately observed that a practicing lawyer could literally consider themselves as having an entire legal library if they possessed one book, not counting the Bible, but Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law. It is taught even to this day in the most secular of law schools, and people understand that Blackstone was, for people practicing the law in the colonies and in the States and in the territories, it was the ultimate resource. And Blackstone was clear on abortion, writing in one of his commentaries, ``If a woman is quick with child and by poison or otherwise killeth it in her womb, or if anyone beat her whereby the child dieth in her body and she is delivered of a dead child, this, though not murder was, by the ancient law, homicide or manslaughter.''

So whatever may have been the exact view taken by common law of any specific offense, in and around 1803, there was no question that abortion was a crime. And yet, in America today, by a judicial decision and by judicial fiat, that has fundamentally changed.

So why does all this matter? As I talked to some colleagues today, they said to me, now, why are you doing that? Is there some legislation coming to the floor that is going to change things in abortion? And I granted the point that ever since Roe v. Wade, we, in the people's House, in the Congress, and in the State legislatures of all 50 States have very little to say about this issue.

It comes down to nine men and women in black robes and the Presidents who appoint them. But it seems to me to be altogether fitting that something that so deeply troubles the heart of half of the American people ought to be something that resonates in the heart of our national government.

That is how I see this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. I said it shortly after 9/11 in a speech that I gave on this same floor, that I viewed the House of Representatives as the heart of the American government and that it ought to resonate with the hearts of the American people. When the hearts of the American people are troubled about an issue at home or abroad, this should be a troubled room. When the hearts of the American people are quiet and at rest, this should be a quiet and amicable place.

It may be over-literalizing it, trying to turn the government into some homotropic version of man, but I think it has merit. And the truth is that while there are millions of Americans who embrace the right to choose an abortion, who take to the street to defend it, who take to the polls to support it, there are, by any measure, a growing number of nearly half of this country who are deeply troubled to live in an America where innocent human life is so callously discarded. It was as Meghan Cox Gurdon called it in an article in the Wall Street Journal a number of years ago, it is, in my judgment, the mother of all rights.

Meghan Cox Gurdon, and I borrow from her essay now, wrote, ``The Roe versus Wade anniversaries make me think of the last scene in Schindler's List, the film about Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved a small number of Jews during World War II. The final scene,'' for those who have seen it, ``features actual Schindler survivors with their children and grandchildren line up to place stones on his grave in Israel. What makes the scene so powerful is not just the surprising number of progeny already produced by the Holocaust escapees, but the staggering number of men, women and children who are not there, who never had a chance of life because the Nazis gassed those who would have been their parents and grandparents.''

Meghan Gurdon goes on to write compellingly, ``When Roe comes up, it has a Schindler-like reverberation in my own family. The fact is, my husband and I, our four children, his three siblings and their combined eight children all owe our lives to the fact that the famous Supreme Court decision did not come until 1973 (and its British equivalent until 1967). For all 17 of us, all descended from two unwanted pregnancies--two pregnancies that produced hasty marriages, some unhappiness, rather more sadness, and even actually two divorces. And I have to say, boy, am I glad that those pregnancies, dismaying and unexpected as they were, entailing the compromises that they did for those involved, were not tidied up in a clinic so that the young mothers in question could `get on with their lives.' You, gentle reader, would have been deprived of nothing more than my editorial voice. I and 16 kinsfolk would have been robbed of everything.''

It is in every sense, as Meghan Gurdon writes, ``the mother of all rights.'' I think it is why our founders listed life first, that they knew from the spilled blood that had happened on our shores and would happen at the hands of a despotic king. They knew that if a man does not have an unalienable right to life, he has nothing. That if a man or a woman cannot anticipate that government cannot deprive them of their life without due process of law and cannot deprive any human person of their right to life without due process of law, then they are, in the words of John Calvin, like that man in his own home, most grievously offended to have been attacked in what is to be his safest place.

Alexander Hamilton cautioned us against forgetting the ancient parchments, the teachings of ancients, and cautioned those who believed that we could create a society that separated law from moral truth saying, ``The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.''

It is a truth, Mr. Speaker, I have tried humbly to advance today for your and my colleagues' ears and for anyone else who is listening and in the weeks and months and, if the Lord wills it, years ahead. I hope from time to time to come to this floor and do likewise. To begin to take a break from the arguments of the day at home and abroad and to take a longer-view perspective on this Nation and on the vitality of its legal and moral traditions. For it seems to me that abortion is the issue of our time.

I used to say to people when I was younger that I thought abortion was the most important moral issue of our time, and I have since abandoned the adjective because I really do believe that as the late Mother Teresa would say often, that it is the defining issue of our age, and on some days, I believe in a hopeful view of the future, that our posterity will look back and say there was a time when America lost her way, but largely because of a broken heart, she came back. She came back to the truth of the ancient, not because she returned to a puritanical society that judged people in their hour of need, but because America again became a broken hearted society that said, we want to be a place where there are no unwanted children. We want to be a society where crisis pregnant centers come to replace entirely centers where innocent life is destroyed; where women know that there are better choices, not only for their unborn child, but for them than ever the choice of ending that life.

That is my hope and that is my dream that they will look back on this time and they will say, Mr. Speaker, America got off the path, but she reflected on the truths of the ancients. She reflected on the unalienable rights that she had alienated for a while, of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And by God's grace, she found her way back, to be a compassionate society and a caring society, but a society that once again embraced the unalienable right to life.

Mr. Speaker, in Indiana, high school basketball is a passion. My home state has produced thousands of first-rate players and coaches since the 1940s. And one such hero passed away on Tuesday at the age of 79.

Coach Bill Stearman's basketball acumen earned him legendary status throughout Indiana. His Columbus High and then Columbus North teams won 714 games, included among

them two semistate titles, 12 regional championships and 27 sectional crowns. amassed an impressive resume including two undefeated regular season teams before being inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983.

But, Mr. Speaker, while all of Indiana will mourn the passing of an outstanding basketball coach, Bill Stearman's hometown of Columbus, Indiana will mourn the passing of a great man and Christian role model to generations of Columbus High School students, myself included.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the City of Columbus, I extend heartfelt sympathies to Bill Stearman's family, specifically his son Bill, his grandson Sloan and his sister Katherine. Coach Stearman embodied both the Hoosier Hysteria of Indiana high school basketball and the Hoosier Hospitality of Indiana's caring communities. He will be deeply missed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a deep sense of gratitude as an American in the wake of the courageous and determined address that the President of the United States made before the United Nations yesterday. The temptation for the President, Mr. Speaker, was clear. It was to respond to weeks and months of withering criticisms about our historic allies and to go into the chamber of the United Nations with a tone of apology, a tone of conciliation. But that is precisely not what President George W. Bush did.

Yesterday, the President of the United States strode into that chamber and with our allies and even some of our antagonists represented in the audience, even including in the war on Iraq, the leaders of nations that opposed our coalition, President Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and President Chirac of France were in the audience and listening, but the President did not mumble; he did not apologize. He came and explained the challenges that we face in Iraq. He embraced the nations, some 32 in number, who joined together in a coalition for nothing less than the advancement of freedom for the people of Iraq.

It was, in sum total, Mr. Speaker, one of the finest addresses I believe that the President has made since taking office in January of 2001.

And I was here on the floor of the Congress when the President came in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and spoke those courageous words. But yesterday speaking to the world, the President of the United States struck the right tone. It was that we are not here in any way to gloat, but neither are we here to apologize for doing the necessary work of freedom in the world, for taking the 16 separate pronouncements of the United Nations seriously, and leading a coalition to enforce them against a tyrannical dictatorship in Baghdad.

The United States had nothing to apologize for, and the President was right, in words and in tone, not to apologize. But let me also say that the President was right to go to the United Nations and challenge that body and its membership to come alongside those of us that advance freedom and human rights in Iraq, saying that for the members of the United Nations there was, ``a role to play in humanitarian assistance, in the establishment of a transition to a free and democratic government.''

I also commend the President for identifying that proper role for the United Nations to play. And so it seems to me all together, Mr. Speaker, that President George W. Bush, struck exactly the right balance. He spoke glowingly of our role in advancing freedom for the people of Iraq, in standing up for the rule of law and human rights in the world as Americans have done for other peoples throughout our history.

The President also said there is a role for allies now, to let bygones be bygones, to come alongside and to be a positive force as an international community for change for the people of Iraq that will be stable, that will be permanent, and that could literally change the landscape of that torn region of the world for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the President of the United States for being a man of principle, a man of freedom, and a true leader on the world stage.

Mr. Speaker, the Bible tells us if you owe debts, pay debts; if honor, then honor; if respect, then respect. I rise humbly today to begin to pay a debt of honor and respect to an American hero, Staff Sergeant Frederick L. Miller, Jr., of Hagerstown, Indiana. Staff Sergeant Miller was killed Saturday outside Ramadi in Iraq when a bomb exploded near his Humvee, according to the Department of Defense's information made public yesterday. Staff Sergeant Miller leaves behind a pregnant wife expecting his first son, two beautiful daughters, grieving parents and a grieving community.

Miller commanded a Bradley Fighting Vehicle assigned to Troop K in the 3rd Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment based in Fort Carson, Colorado. He joined the Army after graduating from high school, and would have celebrated his 8th year in the service next month. Miller was discharged after his first tour of duty, but he reenlisted after 9/11. His mother said, ``It was his purpose to save our country, and he had a job to do.'' And so he did it, Mr. Speaker.

Staff Sergeant Frederick L. Miller, Jr., is a hero, and he died as heroes do, saving his country. I extend on behalf of the people of eastern Indiana my deepest sympathies and fervent prayers to Staff Sergeant Miller's wife and family as they grieve the death of this heroic American.

Mr. Speaker, I support free trade in principle, but I am troubled about its practice in America today. The State of Indiana has lost more manufacturing jobs than any other State in the Union. Virtually every major manufacturer in my eastern Indiana District has shed jobs since this recession began in the latter months of 2000, with one exception, and this week that company announced the elimination of 600 jobs in an entire foundry in central Indiana.

I just came from a meeting with the Secretary of Commerce, Don Evans. I commend the Secretary and the President for the appointment of a new Assistant Secretary of Manufacturing for establishing an unfair trade practices team. It is time for this administration to focus on enforcement of our trade agreements, with special emphasis on China and Mexico. Make them be as good as their word, Mr. Speaker, and it is also time to explain to American industry that shifting jobs overseas for short-term profits serves neither them, their shareholders nor their Nation in the long term.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with a deep sense of gratitude to our majority whip, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), and to his colleague, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford), for their yeoman's work in crafting the Blunt-Ford Charitable Giving Act. It is an extraordinary piece of legislation that will encourage the investment by everyday Americans into the organizations that make our communities great.

While this bill is targeted to all charities, its impact will be profound, especially in the faith-based community. It

is worthy of noting that 75 percent of food pantries are religious- based, 71 percent of food kitchens are faith-based, and 43 percent of shelters in this country are faith-based providers. Today's Blunt-Ford Charitable Giving Act is part of President Bush's vision of a faith- based initiative encouraging everyday Americans to come along side those who each and every day do for the least of these.

I strongly support this legislation and strongly urge its passage today.

Mr. Speaker, I have been very moved by the comments of my colleagues today, and I also rise to express, as this resolution suggests, the profound sorrow of the House of Representatives for the death of Indiana Governor Frank O'Bannon.

I was greeted by my wife, Karen, as I returned from the grocery store Saturday. She, with tears in her eyes, told me simply that Frank had died. And throughout last week, along with tens of thousands of Hoosiers, our family labored in prayer, not so much on behalf of a Governor as we did on behalf of a friend, because that is what Frank O'Bannon was to tens of thousands of Hoosiers.

I will never forget years ago, long before I entered public life, chatting with Governor Frank O'Bannon about the State of Indiana, and his face virtually lit up as he said, you do get to feel that you know somebody in every little town in this State when you do this job.

I always had the feeling for Governor Frank O'Bannon that Indiana was a small town, if not even a family, and it did not matter what our politics were, that was 8:00 to 5:00 with Frank O'Bannon. After 5 o'clock we were Hoosiers, and we came together and on so many occasions. I remember, with great fondness, his intense interest in me and in my family and in my children. He had this unusual quality, that I have reflected on with my colleagues from Indiana, of making everyone else in the room feel that they were more important than him. Even when he was the highest elected official in our State, he had a quality of humility that will always remain for me a standard in public life.

In closing, I just add, as the gentlewoman from Indianapolis, Indiana (Ms. Carson) said, the Good Book gives us comfort in time of loss, and I think of those verses in Micah, chapter 6 verse 8. It says ``In what, O, man, is required of you but this: To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.''

When I look at the public career of Frank O'Bannon as a man, a State senator, a Lieutenant Governor, a Governor, a husband, a father, a grandfather, he was a man who did justice, who lived and loved kindness, and who walked humbly, in a way that will ever inspire this public servant to do likewise. To Judy and the children, to Governor Kernan and Maggie, our condolences and our prayers.

Mr. Speaker, Sunday night President Bush addressed the Nation for the first time since the end of major combat in Iraq. He showed the world once again, as ever, his determination, his tenacity to see this war through to its just conclusion, to bring peace and independence and security and freedom to the people of Iraq.

The President also called on this Congress in the next month to appropriate nearly $90 billion in supplemental spending for military and reconstruction efforts, and so we should address that astonishing number thoughtfully and carefully, as we are charged to do under the Constitution.

But I would offer two humble principles. Number one, our troops have every penny they need to get the job done and come home safe. But it is time on the subject of reconstruction, Mr. Speaker, that we begin to ask our partners in the Coalition of the Willing to contribute their resources along with the American people to rebuilding Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, it was King Solomon of Israel who said two millennia and more ago that it was the whole duty of man to fear God and keep the Commandments.

Thanks to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), Congress has a chance to keep the Commandments in their place in the public square by passing the Ten Commandments Protection Act. With nearly 100 cosponsors, this act simply affirmatively asserts the provisions of the 10th amendment that say that State governments ought to be able to define how they display the Ten Commandments in State buildings. This is right under our law, that freedom of religion is not the freedom from religion, and respect for religion is enshrined in our history as we heard the prayer this morning and read ``In God We Trust'' on these walls, but it is mostly important because, despite the ethos of our times, God is still real and God still rewards nations that acknowledge him.

Let us adopt the Ten Commandments Protection Act and keep the Ten Commandments in their rightful place in the public square.

Mr. Speaker, as the author of legislation passed by Congress earlier this year and signed by President Bush known as the Truth in Domain Names Act, one can imagine my sense of satisfaction when yesterday I received a call from a United States Attorney in Manhattan to learn that the first prosecution under the Truth in Domain Names Act had taken place.

Yesterday, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged a Florida man with violating this new law that essentially makes it illegal to use a misleading Internet domain name to entice children to view pornography on the Internet. The defendant, John Zuccarini, had actually registered 3,000 domain names that included misspellings and slight variations of popular names like ``Disneyland'' and ``Bob the Builder'' and then would lease them to pornographers to expose children to this prurient material.

Thanks to the leadership shown here in Congress, by the President and by the U.S. Attorney James Comey, Mr. Zuccarini is now being brought into the halls of justice. And I am deeply humbled by this and felt the need today to rise and thank my colleagues for their support of the Truth in Domain Names Act and most especially the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and his capable staff, Phil Kiko and Beth Sokul, without whose effort the Truth in Domain Names law would not be in a position today to terrorize those who would prey upon our children on the information super highway.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight with some hesitation, fearful that I might simply be accused of coming to the floor of the Congress to report on what I did on my summer vacation. But the truth is, Mr. Speaker, that I rise today with a deep sense of gratitude to the National Park Service, and in a deep impression imposed upon me and my three small children and my wife Karen during our visit to a place called Yellowstone.

The first of the national parks, established in 1880, it in fact inspired President Teddy Roosevelt himself to establish the National Park Service during his administration at the turn of the century, and now I know why.

With the assistance of an amateur photographer, age 11, by the name of Michael Joseph Pence, who I am sure is eagerly watching at this very hour, I hope to introduce you to some of the experiences of Yellowstone of our family and the remembrances of those who first explored it.

It was, in fact, General Washburn in 1870 who was commissioned by Congress to survey Yellowstone thoroughly for the very first time, and the Pence family expedition was filled with the same wonder this past August. In fact, it was September 14, 1870, when

General Washburn wrote, ``There is daily crowded upon my vision so much novelty and wonder which should be brought to the notice of the world and which, so far as my individual effort is concerned, will be lost to it if I do not record the incidents of each day's travel, that I am determined to do so and omit no details.''

Images like this, at the base of the Upper Falls in Yellowstone, bespeak the extraordinary glory and splendor that General Washburn experienced in his expedition, and my family certainly experienced in ours.

Of course, here are the geysers, not just Old Faithful, captured here memorably by my 11-year old son, but literally dozens of active geysers described by General Washburn as a geyser ``exposed to the sun, whose sparkling rays fill the ponderous column with what appear to be the clippings of a thousand rainbows.'' So it was on September 19, 1870, and so it is today.

But my greatest memory came, as it does for many Americans, at a place called Inspiration Point. It is a place, perhaps the very best view of the falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It was there in August of 1870 that General Washburn wrote of this very picture and image, Mr. Speaker, ``The place where I obtained the best and most terrible view of the canyon was a narrow projecting point situated two miles from the lower fall. Standing there, rather lying there for greater safety, I thought how utterly impossible it would be to describe to another the sensations inspired by such a presence. As I took in this scene, I realized my own littleness, my helplessness, my dread exposure to destruction, my inability to cope with or even comprehend the mighty architecture of nature.'' August 1870.

These visions inspired General Washburn's expedition, and they inspired the expedition of the Pence family this August and my young son, an amateur photographer.

But as I close, Mr. Speaker, in the words of General Washburn when he left Yellowstone he wrote, ``We are all overwhelmed with astonishment and wonder at what we have seen, and we feel we have been near the very presence of the Almighty.''

And so it is that as Americans in this generation, as in the past and in the future, because of the contribution of the National Park Service and its extraordinary stewards in the Yellowstone Park of Montana and Wyoming, Americans of this next century and every century, it is my hope, will be able to feel that same great presence amidst His great architecture of nature.