Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized to address

you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

I come before this floor to address a topic that has been front and center in this country since 1973: when the Supreme Court came down with the decisions known as Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, then the subsequent case in the early 1990s, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

This is a nation that has traditionally--and from the very beginning of the very first founding document, the Declaration of Independence-- respected and revered life.

As our Founding Fathers put that language together, and as John Adams coached Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson put his pen to the Declaration of Independence: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.''

Now, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't an accident that the order of these rights that come from God be started out with life, then liberty, then the pursuit of happiness.

Of all the scholars that I have talked to and the times that I have sat in the classroom and in my readings, it just never really claim clear. It is not educating our young people about what they were thinking about when they drafted that language in the Declaration: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,'' but the right to life is listed first. It is not second or third.

They didn't put together a list of four or five or seven or ten different rights. They laid three out in the Declaration. And those three start with life, because life is the most paramount right.

The former Governor of Pennsylvania, Governor Bob Casey, a Democrat, who has since passed away, was denied an opportunity to speak at the Democratic National Convention some years ago because he was a pro-life Democrat Governor and he would speak in favor of life. He said this: ``Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself against which all other things are weighed.''

The measure itself.

Now, what does that mean and how do we think about this, Mr. Speaker?

It would be this: when the Frenchmen devised the metric system, they set up a distance that was divided out to mean a ratio of the circumference of the Earth in whatever manner of calculation they had. And they came down to--however many times they divided that around, it came down to the length of the meter.

Then they produced this meter that was a platinum rule that was set at precisely the length of the meter. And, in controlled temperature and pressure, at standard temperature and pressure, what would the length of this platinum rule be? Exactly a meter.

Now, how long is a meter? I guess I could tell you, we can measure it by other measures. We can do some comparisons. But that meter, that original meter made out of platinum that is maintained at standard temperature and pressure, that is the measure itself; and all other measurements of length that are incorporated within the metric system, all of those measures of length are in relation to the meter itself. That meter stick, the original one, is the measure itself against which all other distances are weighed and measured in the metric system.

Human life is the measure itself against which we measure every other value that we have because human life is sacred in all of its forms. And then, once we accept that and this Nation accepts that human life is sacred in all of its forms--Democrats and Republicans do agree to that, I believe, generally speaking, maybe even universally--but the disagreement comes in, well, when does life begin? When does life end?

We can look at any one of the pro-life groups that are here in this country. You can ask the priests and pastors around America: When does life begin? The most consistent answer to that question is life begins at the moment of conception, the instant of fertilization, the instant of conception. That language is threaded throughout.

I have walked into gymnasiums, or maybe a whole school, K-12, or maybe a high school alone, and I will say to them: You will be faced with a couple of questions in your emerging young adult life, and the counsel that you would give to your friends perhaps, or maybe you, yourself, you will have to answer these two questions: Is human life sacred in all of its forms?

And I will say to them: Look at the person next to you. Is their life sacred? And they will nod their head.

Look at the person on the other side. Is their life sacred? And they will nod their head.

And I said: And they are looking at you, and they are nodding their head at you, too, because everybody in here, your life is sacred. It is precious. It is the measure itself against which all other things are weighed.

So once we universally agree that human life is sacred in all of its forms, then we have the next question and ask the question: At what moment does life begin, at what instant? And that is that instant at conception, that instant at fertilization. The rational, moral thought and faithful reasoning comes to that conclusion.

Yet the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade and in the accompanying case of Doe v. Bolton, on January 22, 1973, brought down a decision that decided that liberty and pursuit of happiness trumped life. They concluded that a mother could decide whether that child was inconvenient, whether they didn't want the child at the time, and allowed for abortion on demand. Coupling the two cases together, they allowed for abortion on demand.

Doe v. Bolton wrote everything in the list that could be exceptions: it could be the mental health; it could be the physical health; it could be even the familial health of the mother, which any of this could be affected by finances themselves. So if you don't think you can afford this baby, Doe v. Bolton lets you say: Well, it affected my mental health. It affected my familial health, so I decided to abort the baby.

And any abortion doctor could conduct an abortion at will, staying within this framework that was manufactured by the Supreme Court that turned the principles that are in our Declaration on their head. They no longer recognize that life is the paramount right that is delivered to us from God and that liberty is secondary to life and that pursuit of happiness is tertiary to life.

Now, think of this. If any of us, in our pursuit of liberty, would decide that someone's life is in the way of our liberty, we can't go kill them. We would end up in prison or executed in some States. We can't go kill somebody because they infringe upon our liberty. Their life is more important than our liberty.

Neither can someone, in their pursuit of happiness, trample on someone else's liberties. Our liberties of freedom of speech, religion, the press, assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, the protections that we have on a reasonable search and seizure, a jury of our peers, the States' rights that are enshrined in the Constitution that are subordinate to the enumerated powers in the Constitution, that is all laid out within a beautiful framework that has never been done better anywhere in the world in the history of the world, but it is based on the prioritization of God-given rights. Life is more important than liberty, is more important than this pursuit of happiness.

By the way, to define pursuit of happiness a little more thoroughly, some of the young people are growing up and they read that and don't give it very much thought. They say, well, pursuit of happiness is a fun tailgate party before the ball game; it is getting together with my friends; it is sitting down with my Xbox and enjoying the video games that are going on. Maybe it is just listening to music. None of those things fit the categories that our Founding Fathers envisioned when they put pursuit of happiness in the Declaration.

Pursuit of happiness was lifted from the Greek term ``eudaimonia,'' which is spilled E-U-D-A-I-M-O-N-I-A--because we are friends, Christina. Eudaimonia, the Greek term, means pursuit of happiness in this concept that our Founding Fathers understood, and that was that development of the whole human being, not a party at all, not a joke at

all, not a time necessarily of laughter, but it was a component; to develop one's self intellectually, develop one's brain power with a knowledge base that was as strong as it could be, and for a lifetime, to develop one's mind and develop it thoroughly and contemplate deep thoughts to develop themselves. That is the intellectual component of it.

There was a theological component to develop one's self religiously, which they did. Even though they were pagan, in my view, they developed themselves in a belief in a hereafter and in a belief in higher beings. It was plural for the Greeks, the higher beings. But they were developing their intellect. They were developing themselves spiritually and theologically and also physically.

They kept their bodies in shape, and they worked out and they exercised, and they competed in the sports that are the foundation of our Olympics today. All of that was wrapped up in the eudaimonia of the time that our Founders read and understood. Thomas Jefferson thoroughly understood. There is no doubt he understood the meaning of the word ``eudaimonia.'' He just didn't think the American people would understand it, so he wrote in there, ``pursuit of happiness.''

We have just kind of given a short and a brief definition of that. We haven't given it the full respect it was intended by the drafter and, in many cases, the author of our Declaration, Thomas Jefferson.

So now that I have reset this, life is paramount and it is the most important, and any of us should be willing to sacrifice at least some of our liberty to protect and save the lives of others because those lives are that precious and that important. Any one of us who is in pursuit of our eudaimonia, our pursuit of happiness, should be willing to give up some of that in order to secure and protect the liberties-- not only our liberties, but the liberties of others.

So a nation that is built upon those principles would also be a nation that would do most anything to protect the lives of the most innocent among us, our unborn, our unborn that don't have the ability to scream out for their own mercy. They don't have the ability to come to Congress and lobby for themselves. They are silent. They have no chance to make a noise even until the day that they draw their first breath, if they have the opportunity to draw that first breath.

But the tally for the decision of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton on January 22, 1973, now has reached or exceeded 60 million babies--60 million babies sacrificed on the altar of choice.

Watching the prioritized rights that came from God, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Our Supreme Court got it wrong, and they set the liberty of the mother over the life of the baby. They set the pursuit of happiness, the eudaimonia, presumably, of the mother, over the life of the baby.

We have a hole in our society; not only a hole that comes from the heavy, heavy guilt of tolerating this throughout these years, but it is a hole that is a multigenerational hole: 60 million babies not born that would otherwise be living, loving, laughing, learning, falling in love, having babies of their own, worshipping, and raising their children with the values that have made this America a great nation.

But that is all denied this Nation. It is denied the world. The solutions that they would have provided, the happiness and the joy they would have delivered, intellectual firepower that would come from 60 million babies is denied to us.

And to go back and look and think, also, a good number of those little girls that were aborted since 1973 would have otherwise been mothers today. And to look at it generationally, and this is a back-of- the-envelope calculation, to take those little girls and predict that maybe each one of them would have had three babies, each one, that calculates out to be, Mr. Speaker, another 60 million babies--another 60 million.

So the population of this country would be something like 120 million stronger if the Supreme Court had believed and had conviction on what I have just described about the right to life being the paramount right-- more important than liberty, more important than the pursuit of happiness, eudaimonia, the right to life.

When the Supreme Court made that erroneous activist decision, they started this country in a downward spiral, a spiral where there is less respect for life than there was before 1973.

Mr. Speaker, if I just take you to the school shooting data and address that, we look back through the history and the records of the school shootings as well as mass killings that have taken place in schools, look back over the last century, the earliest one that we could find was 1924, in Michigan. It was a series of bombs that were planted in the schools there in Michigan, set to go off by alarm clocks, which would be the kind that we would see in the old cartoons today. Those bombs were timed to go off, and the result of that was 40 people were killed in the bombings at the school in Michigan in 1924, mass school killing. That is the largest mass school killing that we could find by sorting through history as deeply as we could research it, 40 killed, bombings, 1924.

Then not another mass school killing or shooting, not another killing until 1940, when an individual went into a school in Pasadena and killed five people with a pistol. Then not another school shooting, mass shooting of any kind at least, took place from 1940 on. It took us all the way to 1963, 23 years after that single mass school shooting in Pasadena.

Twenty-three years later, the Supreme Court came down with another erroneous decision called Murray v. Curlett. Murray v. Curlett is the case that took prayer out of public schools. Up till that time, we went to school and we went into school and started the day with the pledge and a prayer in the classroom with the teachers, especially in elementary school. I remember that clearly.

But by the time the Murray v. Curlett decision came down, I was a freshman in high school, and I remember that order. The Supreme Court commands no more prayer in the public schools. Where did they get the authority to declare that we couldn't exercise our freedom of religion?

Now, I have been challenged on this a good number of times in subsequent years, but I remember them saying: Well, what will you do about the separation of church and state?

Well, first of all, there isn't a separation of church and state, but it is being exercised by Supreme Court decisions as a separation even not only of church and state, but church and school.

Now, the First Amendment of the Constitution writes, and what it specifically does is it prohibits Congress from establishing a law that creates a state religion. And it denies the ability of Congress to pass that legislation that establishes a state religion, so that is all it does.

And the freedom of religion shall not be infringed. We have a freedom of religion, but they still, the Supreme Court, made the decision to take prayer out of the public schools, an activist act that then began to scrub faith and morality out of our public schools.

I remember that freshman year when I learned this. I remember in that classroom--and these images are in my mind clearly. It was: How are they going to stop us from praying in our schools? What could they possibly do to keep us from praying?

They hadn't invented duct tape yet at that time, Mr. Speaker, but, you know, I am thinking the white adhesive tape that doctors use, the medical tape, and I had images in my mind: Well, they could tape our mouths shut with that tape. We could pray silently. They couldn't stop us from praying by taping our mouths shut.

The only way to stop prayer in the public schools, if we refuse to accept the order, was to empty the schools out themselves. That image is in my mind. Denison Community Schools, where I went to high school, I can still see the central building in my mind's eye, clearing out all the rooms, emptying the rooms, all the students going outside, outside of that school.

And the Army. The Army is in my imagination--Vietnam era--that the Army would come in, and they would have a new chain to roll around those bars that you push inside the doors to open the doors, wrap that chain around there, put a new padlock on it, and post a guard, an Army uniform outside those doors, every entrance into that

school. That is the only way they could have stopped prayer in that public school.

But they stopped it because we accepted the order of the Supreme Court. We accepted the beginning of the degradation of the moral core of America that was being taught in every public school in America at that time.

We revered our faith. We understood our history. We knew that our Founding Fathers, who put this country together, who I believe were moved around like men on a chessboard by the hand of God--I believe the Declaration is written not with divine inspiration, like the Bible, but with divine guidance, just a little bit lower standard of proof. We are gifted in this country with the divine grace that God guided the men and women who built this country in the nearly perfect foundation that they put in place in the Declaration and in also the Constitution.

But we let the Supreme Court, that was never designed to be the most powerful of the three branches of government--we let the Supreme Court rule. And then, now, today, we teach in those schools that there is three equal branches of government. They are not equal. They were not designed to be equal. The Founding Fathers put them together that the judicial branch of government was designed to be the weakest of the three branches of government, and they were not even the branch of government that was designed to come down with a rule on what is constitutional and what is unconstitutional.

The Constitution requires that Congress establish a Supreme Court. And I had made this case to, God rest his soul, Justice Scalia, an awfully hard man to say goodbye to for all that he has done for our country and all the clarity that he has brought to the understanding of the Constitution. I am grateful that Justice Gorsuch is there to replace him in picking up on the things that are so well perfected by Justice Scalia.

But in a meeting with 30 or 40 other members here several years ago, I made the point, Mr. Speaker, to Justice Scalia, and I said to him that Congress is the most powerful branch of government, the legislative branch of government, and the House, in particular, because all spending bills have to start here, and the Constitution doesn't require that we establish all of the Federal circuits that are out there or the Federal district courts below that.

The Congress only--and this is how I put it to Justice Scalia-- Congress is only required to establish a Supreme Court. We could abolish all of the other Federal districts if we chose to do so. In fact, Congress did abolish two judicial districts back in about 1802. That is a pattern. It has been established.

So if Congress decided to do so, we could weaken the judicial branch of government, and we could reduce the judicial branch of government down to just a Supreme Court, because it requires that we-- constitutionally, we are required to establish a Supreme Court. But there is nothing that requires us to build a building, fund a building, or to fund an administrative staff and team for them.

So I said to Justice Scalia: We could eliminate all the Federal courts, except the Supreme Court. We could reduce the Supreme Court down to the Chief Justice at his own card table with his own candle, no staff.

And I think it was a bit of surprise for the very glib Justice Scalia to hear that out of a Member of Congress, especially in a setting that was, I will say, quasi-public at least.

He thought about it for a little bit. I am not sure if he had ever thought about what I had presented to him, Mr. Speaker, but he thought for a little bit, and he said: Well, I would argue that you could reduce the Supreme Court down to three Justices because, otherwise, if you don't have anything but a Supreme Court Chief Justice, there is nothing to be the chief of. So I would argue for three Justices.

And I said: Well, Justice Scalia, there have always been too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

And we, more or less, declared a case ready to move on for further discussion.

But the point of this exercise, Mr. Speaker, is to make the point that the Court's power exists because Congress empowers it. And if there is a struggle between the legislative branch of government, Article 1; or the executive branch of government, Article 2; or the judicial branch of government, Article 3, I would remind the folks involved in any discussion like that that the branches of government were prioritized in the Constitution in the same fashion that the God- given rights are prioritized in the Declaration--life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

In the Constitution, Articles 1, 2, 3--legislative, executive, judicial branches of government--prioritized because our Founding Fathers envisioned that there would be a struggle between the three branches of the government, and they wanted to set up a static power base so that they expected that each branch of government would jealously protect its constitutional authority, and there would be that tug of war, a struggle, ethically and peacefully, they hoped, between each branch of government.

That is why they put the checks and balances in place. They gave the legislative authority to the United States Congress, and the spending authority to Congress, and the initiation of all bills that initiate spending to the House of Representatives. They didn't give it to the Senate because we were to be the hot cup of coffee, and the Senate was to be the saucer that that coffee cooled in.

That is why we are 2-year terms here, 6-year terms over in the Senate, but they wanted a legislative body that would be a quick reaction for us, a fast response for if things got out of whack, if they needed to be addressed quickly, then they wanted the House of Representatives to perhaps turn over quickly so that the House could respond to these issues in a fast way.

They wanted a judicial body, that legislative body that could sit back, maybe fold their arms a little bit, and wait and be patient and think things through so it wasn't just emotional. It was also kind of a hard-charging reaction force in the House, and seasoned by experience, I might add, Mr. Speaker; and a more careful, slower moving body in the Senate, which I think they clearly achieved a more careful, slower moving body in the Senate.

But one of those examples in modern day, when things went against the American people in the elections of 2010, around March 23, 2010--it was March 23--the final passage of ObamaCare passed out from the Senate and the House to President Obama's desk, and he signed that bill as fast as he could get his signature on it. The American people had rejected a Federal Government takeover of our health insurance, at least as a minimum.

And I long said that, you know, our soul is the most sovereign thing that we have, and the government hasn't figured out how to nationalize that yet. I don't believe they ever will.

The second thing that is the most sovereign thing that we have is our bodies, our skin, and everything inside it. ObamaCare nationalized a Federal takeover of the management of our body, our skin, and everything inside of it, took out of our hands the ability to manage our own health in a free market system, and the public rejected such an idea. They rejected ObamaCare.

On March 23, it passed and was signed into law. That election that ensued the following November brought 87 freshmen Republicans to the House of Representatives. Every one of them pledged and every one of them ran on the ticket to 100 percent, rip it out by the roots, repeal ObamaCare. That is the reaction of the public when this body here was not responding to the will of the people. They changed that over in the very next election, which was just months later, from the third month to the eleventh month as--so you are only--and 8 months later, the election had taken place, and we had 87 new freshmen Republicans on the way.

We didn't get as far as we needed to get. We didn't get it fully ripped out by the roots, as I wanted to do, but you can see the effects of that election to this day, Mr. Speaker.

That is how our Founding Fathers envisioned it would work--the House of Representatives to be a quick reaction force. They reacted quickly in the 2010 election. The American people weighed in. When the executive branch gets out of line, there are provisions there. If there is going to be impeachment, the

House has to initiate that impeachment. But over in the Senate, the impeachment doesn't remove a President from office.

I believe it constitutionally requires a trial in the Senate, but to remove a President from office takes a two-thirds majority in the United States Senate. I don't think they served us very well in 1998, when the impeachment went before the United States Senate, when William Jefferson Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives, because the trial in the Senate didn't bring us a verdict. It put all the questions together.

And instead of asking the question, ``Did he commit the acts that the House had indicted him for,'' and in a separate question, ``Should he be removed from office for that,'' they jammed those questions together, and it gave some of the Democrat Senators a way out. They didn't have to answer the question, whether they believed he was guilty or not, so they never really heard the case and gave us a verdict on the conclusion.

It was inconclusive in the Senate. I think that the way they framed those questions that were voted upon by the Senators, I think it was a disservice to the American people, a disservice to our Constitution.

But, nonetheless, there is a check and a balance. If an executive--if a President gets out of line, if his executive branch gets out of line, the House of Representatives can initiate impeachment. The House of Representatives can shut off all funding to that branch of government or--well, it wouldn't do that, obviously, but to a division within that branch of government, we could cut the funds to the funding to bring about the result that is necessary if we have the conviction here and if we believe it is prudent policy.

The House controls the spending. The House initiates any impeachment that might be required, and we don't want to ever exercise that unless it is judiciously done for good reason and good cause. And the Senate, the prudent group of the Senate, come up for election every 6 years, so they can sit back a little bit. Only a third of them have the level of apprehension that all of those who are up for reelection in the House of Representatives do.

But this balance, this check and balance between the three branches of government, was that the branch of government and the division within it--the legislative branch and the U.S. House of Representatives, the division within it was always designed to be able to control the other branches of government and, by the way, able to limit the United States Senate.

The reasons for that are why we are up for election every 2 years so the people would be sovereign. We the people are the ones who really do decide who is right in all of this Republican form of government, which is guaranteed to the American people in the Constitution. We are guaranteed, Mr. Speaker, a Republican form of government. But in this form of government, it is we the people; and we the legislators within the United States House of Representatives are the most accountable to the people, and, by that, we need to be the most responsive to the people as well.

I think history has proven that out. So it doesn't mean either that the Supreme Court gets to decide necessarily what the Constitution means. I will define what it means here, Mr. Speaker, and that is, the Constitution has to mean what it says. It has to mean literally what it says, but it has to also mean what it was understood to mean at the time of its ratification.

Every one of us takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Here, in the House, 435 of us; and over in the Senate, 100 Senators; and a good number of executive branch employees, a long ways down the line, take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Now, I take that oath seriously, and I carry a Constitution in my jacket pocket every day, as close to my heart as it can get, to remember what this means, what it means to me.

But I don't take the oath to support and defend the Constitution with the idea in mind that I am going to shift my oath and the meaning of my oath to conform to a Supreme Court decision that does not reflect the original understanding of the Constitution. None of us can take an oath to a living, breathing, moving interpretation of a document.

This Constitution, Mr. Speaker, this Constitution constitutes a contractual guarantee, an intergenerational contractual guarantee that this God-given liberty, as defined in our Declaration, and the Bill of Rights and the structure of our government and the function of our government, the enumerated powers that are in here, that this is an intergenerational contractual guarantee passed down to us generation to generation, and it can't change its meaning just because five Justices over there in the Supreme Court decided to change its meaning.

Now, I want to respect their jurisprudence and I respect almost all of the decisions that have come down, but there have been times in history when an activist court has decided that they are going to rewrite this society according to their whim.

I have always admired Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is a former judge. He came to this Congress and he ran on this ticket. He has been to Iowa a few times, and he is coming back. He says this:

I found myself on the bench as a judge, and I was

constrained to interpret the literal meaning of the

Constitution and to interpret the literal meaning of the laws

that were passed, and when I felt the urge to be a

legislator, I knew my obligation then was to leave the bench

and run for Congress.

That is what you need to do when you feel in your heart that you are a legislator, when you reason that you can do more to contribute as a legislator than you can as a judge.

So Louie Gohmert came to this Congress. Congressman Louie Gohmert came to this Congress in the right way for the right reasons, to legislate, because that was his heart's desire, and that is where he believed, and I hope today he still believes, that he can do the most good for this country.

But the Justices that sit on the bench that decide that they can just ignore the meaning of the Constitution are undermining our God-given liberty. They are undermining the foundation delivered to us by the Founders. They are undermining the Declaration. They are undermining the Constitution itself.

I can think of a few of those decisions. The Kelo decision, where the Supreme Court ruled that private property could be confiscated, condemned, through eminent domain by a local jurisdiction of government and then handed over to another private interest.

Let's just say that there is a widow lady that lives in a certain section of town, and she wants to live in that house the rest of her life, but there are developers that own the rest of the land around her, and they want to put in a shopping mall. So they would come in and say to the lady: Hey, here is our offer. We want to buy your house.

And she says: No. No amount of money can buy my house. I am going to live in this house the rest of my life.

Well, in the Kelo decision, they went to government, and government condemned the property, took that property away from her. It was litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled that local government could condemn property under the Fifth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, which says ``nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.''

And think of this. They didn't say ``nor shall private property be condemned and handed over to other private interests, without just compensation,'' because the Founding Fathers never imagined that government would have the audacity to condemn private property to hand it over to other private interests.

But the function of that decision was, and so now the effect of the Kelo decision is, the Fifth Amendment now reads, in effect, de facto, we say: Nor shall private property be taken without just compensation. They struck out those three words ``for public use.''

That is the effect of a Supreme Court decision, and it is an erroneous decision. It is a wrong decision. It doesn't reflect the language in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

The dissent was written by Justice O'Connor. I didn't know until after I had made my statement on the floor after that decision that her dissent mirrored almost exactly the statement

that I made on the floor in rejection of it. I didn't expect the gentleman at that time from Massachusetts, Barney Frank, to agree with me either, but Barney Frank, Justice O'Connor, Steve King, and many others agreed: an erroneous decision.

A Supreme Court amended the Constitution, in effect. They de facto amended the Constitution of the United States by coming down with a decision that effectively struck the words ``for public use'' out of the Fifth Amendment, ``nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.''

So now there are extra constitutional takings of private property handed over to private property because local government has concluded they can collect more tax dollars off of that private interest that wants to build a shopping mall or a truck stop or whatever it might be to expand. That is the kind of decision that a Supreme Court can make that are activist decisions that effectively amend our Constitution if we let them do that.

So we think of a decision like Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. How did they cook that up? Where does that come from?

Well, it comes from out of the emanations and penumbras, Madam Speaker, and it is rooted back in a decision called the Griswold decision from the sixties. I believe it was 1964.

Connecticut, at that time, a strong Catholic State, had decided that they would not allow for contraceptives to be sold in Connecticut. The Griswold couple, husband and wife, decided that they had a right to privacy to purchase contraceptives to exercise their liberties.

Now, that decision that was made by the State of Connecticut not to sell contraceptives was a part of the laboratory of the States. It is a State's right to pass a decision like that; and as soon as the people in the State of Connecticut decided they rejected that decision, they can elect some new people to their legislature.

But this was litigated to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the United States decided that that couple, the Griswold couple, had a right to privacy, and that right to privacy included the right to purchase contraceptives.

So they created a new right, a right to privacy. They created it out of thin air, which we now call out of the emanations and penumbras. That is a little shadow around the edge of the cloud that maybe a Justice in a black robe can see but the rest of us lay people or even the brightest attorneys in the land can't quite see because they aren't seated on the Supreme Court.

Well, if you can find rights out of the emanations and penumbras that you can't find in the very language of the Constitution or statute, for that matter, you are an activist judge, and you are trying to alter our society, amend our society into your own fashion. You are legislating from the bench.

So they created a right to privacy, and this right to privacy was then used as the foundation of the decision in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that granted, those two cases together, abortion on demand-- abortion on demand, at least before viability. And viability is a very vague measure of a baby that would be able to survive outside the womb.

Now, that length of maturity within the womb and the ability to survive outside the womb has changed substantially, Madam Speaker, since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Now we have babies who survive clear down as early as into the 20th week. Viability has changed because medicine has gotten ahead of this, and we have saved more babies.

But viability wasn't the only measure, because Doe v. Bolton gave all the exceptions that I talked about earlier, made exceptions for the health of the mother, the physical health, the mental health, the familial health, the financial health, anything that might affect her psyche. So it amounts to abortion on demand for the sake of, well, let's wait until it is convenient to take the life of that innocent little baby.

But what we see now, Madam Speaker, what we see now is that we are watching these babies grow in the womb and the ultrasound. My iPhone has a number of little babies and the ultrasounds in it, and you can watch as those little babies will squirm and reach their arm out, suck their thumb. They look like they are trying to talk, stretch their legs out. They move around a lot more than we ever thought they did.

I have talked to mothers who say as they watch their little baby that is 19, 20 weeks along, squirming around in the ultrasound, that a lot of the time they can't yet feel that movement. We know that as we get later on, even us dads get to feel that movement, and it is a glorious thing. This is the development of a miracle, and you can't be a parent or a grandparent and hold a little baby that is flesh of your flesh and not be amazed at the miracle of a little baby.

When I took my firstborn in my hands, little David Steven King, and put him in my hands and looked at him, it was with awe that I saw so many pieces about him: counted the fingers and toes, took a look at his eyes, saw every little feature that is there, that little son.

And I began to ask that question shortly after his birth: Could anyone take his life now within minutes after he was born? As squirmy and beautiful and miraculous, created in God's image as he was, could anybody take his life then? I don't know anybody who would be ghastly enough who could do so.

So I thought, if he is 20 minutes old and we can't take his life, if he is 5 minutes old and we can't take his life, if he is 1 minute old and we can't take his life, how could we take it a minute before he was born? or 5 minutes? or an hour? or a day? or a week? or a month? Where along this continuum from this moment of conception would there be a time that we could say: Oh, he is only a blob of tissue?

He was never a blob of tissue. He was always a unique human being, joining together the DNA of his mother and his father in a unique fashion that would never be matched again.

Madam Speaker, think of this. Seven billion people on the planet, every one unique. Even the identical twins, the identical quadruplets that are there, their mother can tell them apart. Their father can tell them apart most of the time. And the older they get, the easier it is. But 7 billion faces on this planet, and God created those faces to be unique. No two faces are the same. Even if their DNA is matched up in identical twins or identical quadruplets or identical triplets, as rare as they are, their mothers can look them in the face and know which child is which. The rest of us can figure out everybody else, and we can, a lot of times, figure out the twins, too.

I have twin nieces that I could always tell apart. They would ask me how I could, and I would say: Well, one of you is really intelligent and the other is really beautiful. You two figure out which is which. I am not going to answer the question.

But we can tell them apart. Now, what a gift from God, the creation, to have the imagination to create faces, every one unique. No matter how many people on the planet there are, just the facial features are unique, let alone all the rest of us, let alone all the things that go on in our heads and in our minds and the experiences we have, the personalities that develop differently. That combination of nature or nurture that we will never unlock the mystery of that, that is all a gift from God.

We have aborted 60 million of the gifts from God--60 million--and another 60 million babies not born because their mothers were aborted. Children who never had the opportunity to live to draw that first breath of free air.

When I welcome a new grandchild into the world, I say a prayer over them, Madam Speaker, and I pray that they have a long and a healthy life, a faithful life, and a life that is long and healthy and faithful. And when that day comes that they are called home at the end of that long and healthy and faithful life, I pray that the last breath that they draw is more free than the first breaths that they are drawing on that day. And that is what we need to work for: more freedom, more God-given liberty, more young lives brought into this world.

The very source of all joy comes from little babies, from our children, and if we stopped having babies, the joy would finally just die down. The laughter, the giggling would just diminish day by day by day until there was no joy left in the world, because that is the source of it. And yet we are aborting 1 million babies a year.

That is why, Madam Speaker, I brought the Heartbeat bill to this House of Representatives, H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act. That is why we have worked so hard to get cosponsors on this legislation, we worked so hard to get the cosponsors.

People like former majority leader Tom DeLay came here to work pro bono. The leader of Faith2Action, Janet Porter, a driving force, worked to get cosponsors on this legislation, worked to send the messages in the right place. We carefully drafted language that reflects our intent to save the lives of as many babies as we can from the moment of the heartbeat.

We require that, if the abortionist is intending to commit an abortion, he must first check for a heartbeat, and that heartbeat would be detected at 7 to 8 weeks. If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected, because we know that is a unique human being, a sacred human life.

I would like to go back to the moment of conception, but we can't yet medically identify that moment. But we can identify when a heartbeat can be detected. We all know that if there is a beating heart, there is a baby there. That heart doesn't just sit down there on its own beating away. It is in the chest of a baby, a little baby, a little unique boy or a girl who is a gift from God. That baby has at least a 95 percent chance of successful birth once we can detect that heartbeat in the womb.

So how could we allow for the ending of that unique human being's life without that baby ever having a chance to draw a breath of free air or to scream for its own mercy? How could we say no to that? How could we have in our earpieces that ultrasound of that beating heart?

That little granddaughter is 20 weeks along and her heart was beating last week, anyway, at 161 beats per minute. That beat is strong, firm, and solid. She has at least a 95 percent chance of successful birth and being welcomed into this world drawing that breath of free air, and I will pray as freer still on her last day many, many years from now.

But we need to get there. We need to protect these lives, and we need to get a bill before the Supreme Court. So here in this House, we are 170 cosponsors strong. We are far ahead of any other significant piece of pro-life legislation. I drafted the bill with the strategy in mind, Madam Speaker, to get the Heartbeat bill before the Supreme Court after the next appointment to the Supreme Court.

I am very pleased with what I see with Neil Gorsuch. When I hear the rumors of the potential retirements in the Supreme Court, our three oldest members of the Supreme Court are 84, 80, and 78 years old, Madam Speaker. So we can expect a retirement fairly soon. We need to have a bill out of the House of Representatives sitting on Mitch McConnell's desk long enough and hard enough that we can gin up the effort to get it passed out of the United States Senate.

There are four windows that need to be open before we can start to save lives in significant numbers, Madam Speaker. One of them is a pro- life majority in the House of Representatives. We have that, 237 votes behind the pain-capable 20-week bill.

The next one is a pro-life majority in the United States Senate. Senator Roy Blunt made mention in our values team here a couple of weeks ago that they have a bare majority, a pro-life majority in the Senate. Fifty-one votes voted for the 20-week bill over there. They didn't break the filibuster, but 51. That is a pro-life majority. If they suspend the rules over there and get rid of the filibuster rule, the votes are there to pass Heartbeat bill over and send it to the President's desk. That is the third window.

The first window is a pro-life majority in the House. The second window is a pro-life majority in the Senate. The third window is a President who will sign the Heartbeat bill to protect these lives from the seventh or eighth week all the way through. I don't have any doubt President Trump will sign such a bill, and I don't have any doubt that Vice President Pence will be standing right next to him when that day comes. I don't know whether I am going to be standing there, but I am going to do everything I can, Madam Speaker, to get the Heartbeat bill to the President's desk.

Yes, it will be litigated. The pro-abortion people will litigate everything that slows down the abortion mills in this country. So it would be litigated. And the timing of getting it out of the Senate to the President's desk and before the Court after the next confirmation means we are called upon to move the Heartbeat bill out of the House within the next few months because as we get closer to the election, it gets harder. Things get crazy around here. So if it gets passed around July, it is going to be really hard to move the Heartbeat bill.

There is a little rule that was handed down, I think, from the previous Speaker that says that pro-life legislation doesn't move off the floor of the House unless the top three pro-life organizations support it and will actively support it here in the House of Representatives.

Those organizations would be Family Research Council. Tony Perkins supports the bill. The next organization is Susan B. Anthony List. They also have agreed to support the bill. Yes, they have a priority they would like to have move ahead of that, but Marjorie Dannenfelser said:

Of course, I would never stand in the way of something so

good as the Heartbeat bill.

The third organization is the one that is not fully on board. In fact, I don't see that they are supporting it in any way, and back channel says to me that there are some statements made to try to slow it down. That is the National Right to Life, the oldest and the largest pro-life organization in the United States of America. They said that they don't oppose the Heartbeat bill.

Madam Speaker, this is right off of their electronic publication, whether it happens to be a tweet or whether it is their website, but here is their statement: National Right to Life, protecting life in America since 1968.

National Right to Life says they do not oppose the Heartbeat bill. I struck through there with a red line and said: Well, neither do they support it. They don't oppose the Heartbeat bill. Well, they don't support the Heartbeat bill.

They are stuck on this. They are hidebound on this. Their mission statement says that they support and protect life from the beginning of life until natural death. They define the beginning of life at the moment of fertilization.

So how can you be National Right to Life and not support the Heartbeat bill?

Their reasoning is that they are stuck in this. They refuse to challenge the Supreme Court. They refuse to challenge the viability standards that were written into Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

If the number one pro-life organization refuses to challenge the Supreme Court on those standards, then what they are really doing is accepting--and some would say accepting the idea that we are going to see 1 million abortions a year in this country, as far as the eye can see, because if you are not willing to challenge the Supreme Court, then you are accepting 1 million abortions.

That is what we get if we are trimming around the edges with pain- capable at 20 weeks. I support all of this legislation. Let's do it all, Madam Speaker. The pain-capable doesn't get the job done. It shies away from challenging the Supreme Court.

We wrote this Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490, in order to challenge the viability standard the Supreme Court has. We want to measure life-- unique, precious, sacred human life--from the moment of conception until natural death, protected. By the way, protected in the 14th Amendment. We are all protected in there: life, liberty, and property. So all we need to do is define when life begins, and we are obligated by the Constitution to protect that life.

But the Supreme Court has different ideas. I don't believe they will after the next appointment to the Supreme Court.

So some of the people who agree with National Right to Life have said that not enough States have passed it. Okay. So we went to work. Here are the States that have passed heartbeat protection language: Ohio, North Dakota, and Arkansas.

Now, John Kasich vetoed that legislation.

Who lobbied him to do that?

The arm of National Right to Life and Planned Parenthood; side by side, by the way.

What brings them to do that, Madam Speaker?

Because they don't want to challenge the Supreme Court. There is testimony that went before the Ohio Legislature December 13, 2011, that said: We don't want to force Justice Kennedy to vote ``no'' on a Heartbeat bill because then Justice Ginsburg might write the majority opinion. If she does that, she might take away the things we have gained. And we should not go before the Court and risk what we have gained.

I would argue instead that every time we have gone before the Court, we have gained. We gain something. We gain ground. The Court is sensitive to the movement of our society. They were sensitive to that when they ran up the Obergefell decision that imposed same-sex marriage on America. They decided American society was ready for same-sex marriage, and they gave us an extraconstitutional decision and forced it on everyone in America.

They must have been right because there wasn't a very big fight that was put up. But by their rationale, we are a lot more ready to protect innocent unborn human life than we ever were for gay marriage. Yet we need to get this legislation before the Court.

Tonight at 6 o'clock eastern time, 7 o'clock central time, there is a full hearing before the Iowa House of Representatives on their Heartbeat legislation, which has passed the senate 30-20. It went before the house. It has passed out of committee out of the house last Thursday night in the last hour that was available in what they call funnel week. Now this hearing is called for by the pro-abortion people who want to have a full house hearing. The witnesses will be lined up there. They will stand up for life tonight.

If the hearing goes the way we expect, I expect the bill will come before the Iowa House of Representatives and it will pass. Watching the expressions on our excellent and wonderful first female Governor in the State of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, I can't imagine she would do anything but sign it. I don't want to put words in her mouth. I am just anticipating a wonderful result.

I believe in 1 week or 2 weeks that becomes law in Iowa. Likely the pro-abortion people will litigate like they did in Mississippi on Mississippi's 15-week bill that we have just seen before today, an injunction that is going before the Sixth Circuit. The viability standards in Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and also Planned Parenthood v. Casey will be challenged in the Fifth Circuit on the basis of the Mississippi law. Then that means that the Iowa law that I anticipate also will be litigated.

Why wouldn't we send this standard over to the Senate and on to go before the Supreme Court?

H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act, litigated at the same time before the United States Supreme Court along with Mississippi's 15-week bill and Iowa's Heartbeat bill. That looks to me like a good result. That brings it from several different angles.

I would remind the body that there were three Federal circuits where the partial-birth abortion legislation was heard simultaneously. They arrived packaged up in one case before the United States Supreme Court, and life prevailed in that case, as eventually life will prevail in the United States of America.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 4 o'clock and 56 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Dr. Harris for leading on this Special Order here this evening and appreciate the opportunity to be recognized.

There are a number of things that I would point out. For starters, I chair the Constitution Committee for a reason, and the delivery by Mr. LaMalfa on California's horrible Reproductive FACT Act law--it is not facts, by the way, but it forces pro-life pregnancy centers to provide free advertising for the abortion industry.

I don't think there is any question, if you coerce people to advertise for something that, in the first place, is immoral and directly runs against the convictions of the people who are volunteering their time and those who are contributing their resources to bring about a crisis pregnancy center, which is driven by the hearts of the pro-life community in America--I can hardly think of anything more important than having that happen.

Now, freedom of speech is one thing. You can't limit speech. But for a State to impose speech, that is another level. That goes beyond. That is beyond the pale of the constitutional First Amendment rights.

So as I think about crisis pregnancy centers and what it matters and how it matters to me and the district that I represent: Not long after I was elected to Congress, I went to Gabriel's Corner in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I walked in there, a crisis pregnancy center, a building that was built in what was an empty lot across the street from Planned Parenthood's abortion center. As I walked in there, they had a big picture window they had set up and a kneeler there so that you could be there to look out through that window and pray for those mothers who were going into the Planned Parenthood.

And they said to me in that briefing that if a mother was able to have a 4D ultrasound then--this would be about, say, 13, 14 years ago-- that 70 percent of the mothers would decide, once they had seen the ultrasound, to keep the baby.

As we walked through there, we finished the tour, and I said: Where is your ultrasound?

They said: Well, we don't have one.

I said: Why not?

They said: We can't afford it.

They told me the price on it then was $100,000 for a refurbished ultrasound. I said: Let's raise the money for the ultrasound so that you can save 70 percent of the lives of the babies who come in here because of their mother.

So we set about the fundraising effort. I hardly got started and an anonymous benefactor showed up and said: Why are you waiting? Why don't you have the ultrasound?

I answered: We're raising the money.

He said: Well, go buy the ultrasound, but don't tell anybody who I am.

So he wanted to be an anonymous benefactor. We did that; set up the ultrasound. The annual dinner for Gabriel's Corner, the first little baby that was saved by Gabriel's Corner that we knew was brought along to that dinner. And I looked back in that dinner and there was that man sitting in the table clear back at the end, not talking to anybody, but watching. Wow. I have never forgotten what that meant.

Another occasion, an individual came to me and he said: I'm in between careers. I need something to do.

As we discussed this, it came to the foundational idea to establish Mary's Choice in Sioux City, Iowa. They went ahead with that, a Catholic pregnancy center, a crisis pregnancy center. As they followed through, they built that next to--or they developed it next to Planned Parenthood's abortion clinic.

Planned Parenthood couldn't stand the guilt of people praying for them, so they built a big fence, thinking that was going to block the prayers. Well, I think it attracted them instead. The last time I was there, I had my picture taken in front of the Planned Parenthood center in Sioux City. There is a Century 21 real estate sign in front of there, and you can't read ``Planned Parenthood of the Heartland'' any

longer on there except in the glue, where they pulled the sign off. It is for sale, or may be sold by now.

Progress has been made, lives have been saved. The respect for innocent, unborn human life has grown. And to muzzle them, or force a speech, not just limiting their freedom of speech, but forcing speech-- so I just looked at my iPhone here, and there are a number of ultrasounds that have been texted to me. I am kind of like, I guess I would say, the number one proponent of procreation in Congress, as far as I know.

Here is one. It says: ``Baby looked good yesterday. Moving like crazy on the ultrasound.''

I answer: ``This is so beautiful. I'll keep my prayers going. This ultrasound is an answer to them. God's blessings.''

Next ultrasound comes along. This is dated just last Friday. I sent back: ``What is the heartbeat rate for this perfect little miracle?''

She answers: ``161 beats per minute.''

And then I say: ``Purring along like a finely-tuned racing motor, that little miracle.''

``Yes, and she's moving all around'' is the answer.

And here is the conclusion of this. I just think this is so important to implant this in our memory.

She answered this way, this mother: ``These ultrasounds are amazing. Watching her stretch and cross her legs, curl up her hand, suck her thumb. At 19 weeks, I can't imagine anyone contemplating abortion would proceed with it after seeing that in their own little baby.''

That little baby is my little granddaughter, and I am going to stand up for life so long as I live.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

I would say in defense of the K-9 Corps--and I appreciate the presentation delivered by Dr. Yoho and my great friend from Florida, who gets common sense right in this Congress--that I am a fan of the K- 9 Corps.

I am also a fan of the ``benign corps.'' And I want the ``benign corps'' to be thinking about what that means. It is not just a bingo game, but it is bingo for a cancer patient. So when you get the diagnosis of K-9 or benign, I am taking benign over K-9 because that is the thing that we celebrate more than anything else, is that lease on life, that if it goes 5 years, you are cancer-free. Benign cancer-free for 5 years, that gets the job done.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for standing up for the K-9 Corps, and I am now going to stand up for the ``unborn corps.''

Mr. Speaker, I came here to the floor to speak this evening about this Nation and about a nation that has granted to its Supreme Court-- sometimes just because we weren't paying attention or we didn't have the confidence of our convictions--I suppose there was a time when Americans were no better informed on constitutional principles than we are today. Over 216 or so years, we have had this experience of accepting the idea of Marbury v. Madison, a Supreme Court decision that over time, with accumulated decision by decision rooted back in Marbury, that the Supreme Court of the United States was the final word on what the Constitution says.

The Constitution doesn't say to the Supreme Court that they have the final word. Instead, it is court precedence, case precedence, that laid the foundation in about 1802 that has been built upon ever since.

The longer we accept the tradition of a Supreme Court decision being the final decision on what the Constitution says, the more deeply ingrained is the commitment to that decision and the less our Constitution itself means and the more the traditions of the acceptance of a decision of the Supreme Court means. So here we are today.

Mr. Speaker, if people aren't quite understanding what that means, I would describe it a bit of another way. There is a practice in this country called birthright citizenship.

There is nothing in the Constitution that requires that a baby born in the United States is an automatic citizen. In fact, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, says: ``All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States . . . . `'

Well, in post-Civil War, they knew what they were doing. They didn't think we would confuse it over the years the way we have, but they wanted to make sure that the babies born to the newly freed slaves as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War would be American citizens.

They expected that those babies born to the former slaves would be full-fledged citizens with all the rights of citizenship bestowed upon them as those created in the image of God, just like everyone else. But what happened was, even though the amendment was there that said all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are American citizens, over time, in the latter part of the 19th century, they began to bestow citizenship on any baby born in the United States. And it wasn't successfully challenged, neither is any case on point in all of the full history of the litigation that has taken place that has found its way to the Supreme Court. There is no on-point precedent case that determines that the Constitution requires that a baby born in America be automatically an American citizen, but the practice has prevailed.

The practice has prevailed along the way that a baby born on U.S. territory, with certain exceptions, is an American citizen, even though the Constitution doesn't require it, because the ``subject of the jurisdiction thereof'' clause that is in there meant a number of things.

First, that meant loyalty. Where is your allegiance.

There were Native American Tribes--called Indian Tribes at the time and still today--that if the children born on that reservation were American citizens automatically, they were automatically removed from membership in the Tribe. So the folks who drafted the 14th Amendment wanted to exempt them. That is one of the reasons they inserted the clause, ``subject to the jurisdiction thereof,'' because the allegiance of those born on reservations wasn't viewed to be equivalent to that of those born in the other territorial areas of the United States of America.

Then, of course, they wanted to exempt the children born to ambassadors, the children born to diplomats, the children born to their staff.

Could you imagine if there was an invading army and babies were born to the folks who followed along on that army, that they would be American citizens?

No. They weren't subject to the jurisdiction thereof. They didn't owe their allegiance to the United States. It was clear they owe their allegiance to other foreign princes and potentates, to borrow a phrase from the naturalization oath.

So the clause, ``subject to the jurisdiction thereof,'' exempted those who were not obligated to owe allegiance to the United States, but the practice persisted. It persisted to this day. In fact, some years ago, about a decade ago, we had hearings. In those hearings, the research, at least the testimony, said that somewhere between 340,000 and 750,000 babies were born in the United States where both parents, the mother and the father, were illegal, yet they have been bestowed an automatic citizenship.

And it has created this birth tourism where, back during that testimony time--now the price has surely gone up--if there is a pregnant mother in China, she could buy a $30,000 ticket to fly into the United States, be smuggled into the United States, get her OB care, live in an apartment next to the hospital, deliver the baby, and have that little baby's feet stamped on the birth certificate. And that little birth certificate made that baby an American citizen. Then they loaded the baby up and flew the mom and baby back to China, and 18 years later that baby could begin to petition to bring in the family reunification plan.

That is how a practice gets started that hasn't been successfully blocked because of litigation that would go to the Supreme Court with a decision made based upon justice.

So this situation persists. Three-quarters of a million babies a year, or more--I mean, the entire population of the Dreamers, every single year--born in America to illegal parents, granted automatic citizenship and the ability, once they reach of age, to begin the family reunification process and bring in the whole kit and caboodle of family into America and start them on a path to citizenship.

What kind of nation would do that?

A nation that is steeped in a precedent of habit--a bad habit--that persists in delivering a policy that is not constitutional but rooted in a murky understanding of what the Constitution actually says; I wouldn't say a dishonest, but a misunderstanding of what the Constitution actually says.

So that, Mr. Speaker, I think sets the foundation for the decisions on Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and a number of Supreme Court precedents that built us up to this situation that we have today.

And I am speaking of abortion in America, abortion on demand in America, babies who have a chance to live outside the womb being killed because they are inconvenient. They may be, at the time, not wanted by the mother. We are seeing data that shows that a significant percentage of mothers who have abortions are coerced into that by the biological father who doesn't want to carry that responsibility.

And what is this based upon?

Supreme Court precedents that are--looking back on it, how did they ever build to the position that we are in today?

Back in the sixties, there was a case known as Griswold v. Connecticut. That case was one where a family in Connecticut, a husband and a wife--I don't know if they were parents--wanted to be able to buy contraceptives. And because of the Catholic influence in Connecticut, they had outlawed contraceptives in Connecticut. So they went to the Supreme Court, the Griswolds, and said: We have a constitutional right to purchase contraceptives. It is not the business of the State legislature to tell us that we can't purchase contraceptives. We want to take care of our own reproductive rights by managing our contraception.

So the Supreme Court stuck their nose in what should have been a

States' rights issue and came down with a decision that created, manufactured out of emanations and penumbras--not even whole cloth, but the imagination that there was some cloth there to manufacture it out of--the right to privacy. The Supreme Court concluded that the right to privacy would guarantee the privacy for the Griswolds to be able to purchase contraceptives even though the State of Connecticut said it is against the interests of the people in the State of Connecticut that we control birth through contraceptives.

That was their decision in Connecticut. If people wanted to vote with their feet, they could have left Connecticut. But, instead, the United States Supreme Court decided they had the power and the authority to manufacture a whole new right that doesn't exist in the constitution, a right to privacy; and a right to privacy guaranteed the ability for the married couple to purchase contraceptives.

Well, that was sometime in about the mid-sixties, and not very long after that the Eisenstadt case came up. It was this: An unmarried couple said: Why are we excluded? We have the same constitutional rights as the married couple has. If they have a right to purchase contraceptives because they have a right to privacy, unmarried people have also a right to privacy.

So the Supreme Court decided: We had started down the slippery slope and had granted this right to privacy and a right to purchase contraceptives and keep the government out of the private lives, especially the reproductive lives, of people, consenting adults. How can we deny the unmarried couple the manufactured constitutional right that we have always granted to the Griswolds?

So the Griswold case became the Eisenstadt case, and the non-married couples had the same rights as the married couples.

Along came 1973. Two cases came before the Supreme Court: Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

Roe v. Wade took that concept of a right to privacy that was manufactured, not out of the Constitution, manufactured out of thin air--out of the emanations and penumbras, which means in the shadows of, where the text of the Constitution is--and they decided that a woman had a right to abortion, and it was an inherent right rooted in a right to privacy: You have a right to a contraceptive. You have a right to put an end to the life of that innocent, unborn baby under the same standards of privacy.

Who gets to take the life of a baby, or a child, or a young adult, or a mature adult, or a senior adult? Who gets to do that by saying, It is only my business; I control that; it is my right to privacy?

But the Supreme Court concluded exactly that. But they did say that it could only happen in the first trimester.

But the simultaneous case that came down was Doe v. Bolton. And in the Doe v. Bolton case, they gave exceptions, Mr. Speaker, and said: Well, we are going to restrain this right to an abortion that we have created and manufactured in Roe v. Wade; but we really can't say that if the woman has danger to her life, she shouldn't be able to get an abortion. Sure. We will give her the right to abort her baby if it risks her life.

How about if it risks her health? What if it damages her health? What if it affects her psychological health? What if her familial relationships are going to be upset if she doesn't abort the baby? In other words, what if a young lady doesn't have a husband and it would be disturbing to her family for her to have the baby? We want to give her the right to abort the baby because it would upset her familial health, her family life.

And, of course, if it affects her economically and it affects her psychologically, it might affect her familial life as well. So if it affects her economics, her psyche, her physical health, risks her life, then abort the baby. She has a right for all that.

So when you take them together--Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton--it was abortion on demand, manufactured by the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Speaker, not written into the Constitution, but pulled out of the emanations and penumbras, the shadows of, that little shadow around the cloud out there that maybe we can't see it because we are just laypeople with normal perceptive abilities. We might have the best eyesight. We could have 20/20 vision. Well, we could even have 20/20 rear vision to see what is going on, but the Court put on their black robes, they looked up at the sky and they decided: We know what is written in that place around the edges of the clouds in the emanations and penumbras. We know that it is there because we want it to be there. And we can't read it exactly into the language in the Constitution, but we want it, we see it, and we are going to shape society around it. And they did.

And they came down with the Roe v. Wade decision and the Doe v. Bolton decision the same day: January 22, 1973. Abortion on demand. And how many of us at that time knew what that would mean, Mr. Speaker? How many of us understood the devastating debacle that was served up to the American people?

I remember those times. I remember those years. Marilyn and I were married in 1972. As we looked around at our friends, our contemporaries, there were young couples who were getting started and starting with their families at the time. We knew a decision came down, but we had no idea how bad it would be; and no one in 1973 would have predicted that, 45 years later, we would have experienced 60 million abortions in the United States of America, 60 million babies whose precious lives--perfect little babies, little babies created in God's image. No one would have expected that there would be 60 million on the conscience of America.

No one would have expected that we would hear the business community clamoring for labor saying: We don't have enough people to go to work in America; we have to go to foreign countries and bring in millions of people to do this work.

Nobody out here is even doing the math to say: What happens when 60 million babies are gone, ripped out of the generations over the last 45 years? What does that do to society? What does it do to our economy? What does it do to our mortality, the conscience, the guilt of America, the sins on the soul of the United States of America? What does it do to all that?

But what does it do also to the next generation and the next generation? What about the guilt that is carried by the people who stepped in and took the advice of Planned Parenthood and decided it really isn't a life and there aren't any repercussions--I can be free of the burden of raising a child that I had not planned to raise and walk away and life will be fine again?

What has happened to the people who bought into that story? What has happened to the--let's just say--family force, the workforce of America?

Sixty million babies ripped out of America, ripped out of the womb, ripped apart out of the womb, ripped out of America. Sixty million babies. Forty-five years.

Mr. Speaker, if you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation and you think, of those little girls who were aborted, many of them would be mothers again today, would be mothers by now--and I did a back-of-the- envelope calculation, and I will say that I just figured that, if each little girl that had been aborted since 1973, in those years that they would be of reproductive age--and some of them wouldn't be of that age yet; but if each of those who would be had had three babies, as Marilyn and I have had, that is another 60 million babies. Sixty million.

So now the hole in our society is 60 million babies plus another 60 million babies: 120 million Americans. You could dial it down a little bit. You could say, well, they aren't going to average 3. That is probably true. They could average maybe 2\1/2\ or a little better. If you take the 120 million and you dial that down a ways--I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, what the population of America was 100 years ago.

Let's pick the 1920 census. Mr. Speaker, 106 million Americans was the total population of the United States of America in the census of 1920, which comes up in a couple of years. It will be a century in a couple of years. 106 million Americans. That is how many we are missing today, all of that many babies, all of that many million developed adults, young people who would have lived, loved, learned, laughed, played, raised families of their own, gone to school and gotten educated,

started businesses, created jobs, improved the quality of life of all of us, enriched our lives.

The love that would flow from over 100 million babies growing up in America who were denied the right to life, the right to live, and were taken from this world before they ever had a chance to fill their own lungs with air and scream for their own mercy, that is the burden that America is carrying today.

Mr. Speaker, when that day comes that abortion is over in America and we respect and we revere life again, as it once was and one day ever shall be, when we reach that point, that doesn't mean that America is absolved from this sin on our Nation. What it really means is we can begin to put our pieces back together and build a history and a legacy of a love and a respect and a reverence for life. All life. Life from the moment of fertilization until natural death.

By the way, that life, from moment of fertilization till natural death, is the mission statement of the National Right to Life. The National Right to Life's mission statement--and I am not reading it; I am going from memory, so if I miss a word--says they are dedicated to protecting life from the beginning of life until natural death.

I embrace that mission statement. I embrace that ideology and that philosophy that shaped that mission statement for the National Right to Life, the country's oldest and largest pro-life organization. But I did ask the question: How do they define the beginning of life?

I looked down through their website, and it is defined from fertilization. Life begins at fertilization. That is the mission of National Right to Life, and we agree. I applaud that position, and I applaud the work that they have done over the last more than 45 years, because they formed themselves before Roe v. Wade, I believe, 1968. So they should be applauded for the work that they have done over the years.

But National Right to Life is married to a concept of incrementalism; and when you read through the statements, the testimony that they have supported before various State legislatures, the positions that they have taken, Mr. Speaker, become--and as I have done, sat down and talked with their leadership and tried to convince their leadership to be stronger, more bold, the same answer came back from each one of them that I talked to at National Right to Life, and it is this: they are committed to doing what can be done around the edges.

The Supreme Court has built a fence around what they call a right to abortion. There is no right to abortion. There is no constitutional right to abortion. It is manufactured, as I said earlier.

But National Right to Life, the Nation's oldest and largest pro-life organization, has built a fence around the Supreme Court decisions, and they are working with incrementalism to try to get as close to that fence around the Supreme Court decisions as they can without being reversed by a decision of the Court.

That is their strategic approach, and they have been granted a de facto veto power to any legislation that would come to the floor of the House of Representatives that doesn't have their support. I said ``de facto.'' That is the net result of it. In fact, that is the result of it.

So we have 170 cosponsors on the Heartbeat Protection Act, the piece of legislation that says, before a doctor can perform an abortion, commit an abortion, he must first check for a heartbeat, and if a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected.

We know, if there is a beating heart, there is life. And if there is a beating heart and you go in and stop the beating of that heart, you have ended that life. The most innocent lives that there are are those unborn little babies; and if there is a heartbeat that can be detected, the baby must be protected. That is the bill. That is the Heartbeat Protection Act.

But National Right to Life doesn't support, and they say it this way, Mr. Speaker. National Right to Life, they say: National Right to Life does not oppose the Heartbeat bill--does not oppose--which is a little bit of semantics, Mr. Speaker.

So I struck through the ``does not oppose,'' and I will put it there in exactly the same meaning: they do not support.

If you are the National Right to Life and you are committed to protecting life from the moment of fertilization till natural death, how do you not step up to support the Heartbeat bill that protects babies? From the moment a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected.

The rationale is: our strategy is not here on Heartbeat; their strategy is try not to ever challenge the Supreme Court of the United States.

So how can we have the Nation's oldest and largest pro-life organization that is entrenched in a philosophy and a legislative strategy that says that they are never going to challenge the Supreme Court of the United States? If you are not going to challenge the Supreme Court of the United States, then it is on your head and on the conscience of anybody, not just National Right to Life, but anybody who says: I am not willing to challenge the Supreme Court of the United States; I am not willing to challenge Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, or Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Then you are de facto accepting the idea that there will be--no, accepting the actual reality of a million abortions a year, as far as the eye can see.

This language here that says the National Right to Life does not oppose the Heartbeat bill, I say they do not support the Heartbeat bill. Both statements are true, but opposing challenging the Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton guarantees a million abortions a year as far as the eye can see over the horizon of history and out of sight, a million a year.

We have seen 60 million abortions in the United States of America in the last 45 years. This ratio that we are on today, if the population doesn't grow and if the ratio stays the same, and it sure looks to, unless we do something, we are looking at a million a year and, 45 years from now, another 45 million abortions. In another 15 years, we are back another 60 million, and then it is 120 million babies, and we know how that works.

Then those babies not born to the mothers who would have been giving birth to them, you can double the number again. But already we are missing the entire population of the United States of America of 100 years ago as a result of the abortions since 1973.

This Nation must step up to the moral principle that every human life is sacred. They are sacred in all of their forms. In fact, Governor Bob Casey, Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, since passed away, God rest his soul, said: ``Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure, itself, against which all other things are weighed.''

Well, I am prepared and at least 170 House Members are prepared to go to the Supreme Court again if challenged. Pass the Heartbeat bill out of the House. Pass it out of the Senate. Send it to the President's desk. The President will sign it. The other side, the pro-abortion people, will litigate it, and it will end up in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court needs to decide are they going to reflect and honor life. The 14th Amendment requires that we protect life, life over liberty; and, in fact, there are prioritized rights of life, liberty, and property in the 14th Amendment. In the Declaration of Independence, it is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but always life is number one, Mr. Speaker. Life is always number one.

This country must step up and defend human life. And I want to, from the floor of this Congress tonight, put a shout-out out in congratulations to the Iowa Senate, who moved a very similar Heartbeat bill by a vote of 30-20, passed it off the floor of the Iowa Senate with a 24-minute debate was all the longer it took, 24 minutes, and a 30-20 bipartisan vote came off the floor and got messaged over to the Iowa House of Representatives.

There they are in serious deliberations today. I don't know the results of those discussions. I left there last night with optimism that the Heartbeat bill in Iowa would come to the floor there soon, perhaps as early as next week. And should it pass, then it is likely to go to the Governor's desk.

I do not have her public statement, but I will just say that I have confidence that Governor Reynolds will sign the Heartbeat bill if it gets to her desk. She is a solid, principled, clear-thinking leader who is also pro-life, Mr. Speaker.

So we are doing the things that we can do to protect the lives that we can protect, but it is not good enough to play a perpetual strategy of incrementalism. Incrementalism of a little bit here, a little bit there, try this, try that, what has it done for us?

It has saved a few lives, it really has, and every life is precious and worth saving, but it is not good enough. It is not good enough to accept the idea that we are going to see a million babies aborted in America every year as far as the eye can see.

So that is why the House of Representatives needs to get the Heartbeat bill to the floor where I believe the votes are there for it to pass. National Right to Life needs to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Right now, the number one entity in the entire United States of America that is holding the Heartbeat bill off the floor of the House of Representatives is right here, the Nation's number one pro-life organization, the National Right to Life.

Justice Kennedy has announced--it is announced, at least, and not by Justice Kennedy yet, that he is likely to retire midsummer. We will have a pro-life Court by September, and it is time to move now.

That is my message, Mr. Speaker, and I ask all of us to stand up and protect innocent, unborn human life, and let's start to cleanse, again, the soul of America.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 41 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to have the opportunity to be here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. I ask that people who are listening to our conversation weigh heavily on some of the remarks that will be made here this half hour.

I come to the floor tonight, Mr. Speaker, to address the situation of innocent, unborn human life in America and to recount the path that we have followed and to lay out a path for the future that gives us a better opportunity to save as many lives as possible.

For me, Mr. Speaker, I recall that when 1973 rolled around--January 22, 1973--on that date, we had two major decisions that came down from the United States Supreme Court: Roe v. Wade, which most everybody knows; and the other was Doe v. Bolton. Of those two cases that dropped on us in January of 1973, not very many people, if any, understood the magnitude of the decisions that had been made that day or the impact it would have on the population of the United States of America.

They did not believe that we would see 45 years of pro-life marches coming to the city in the middle of the winter and sometimes marching through the snow from down on the Mall, all the way up to the United States Supreme Court building, calling upon the Supreme Court to correct the decision that was made by an activist court in 1973.

The bottom line of that decision was that an abortion was essentially declared to be, some would say, a constitutional right for any reason or no reason at all, as much as you might want to parse the phrases in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Mr. Speaker.

Of course, for me, I didn't realize the impact of this in 1973. But by 1976, when my first son was born, I remember holding him in my hands and looking at David Steven King, understanding the miracle of life and the miracle of birth and thinking within that first hour of his life how anyone could take his life now, this little miracle child with that big head and dark hair and blue eyes and gurgling a little bit and crying some and squirming a lot, but a miracle.

I thought: How could anyone take his life now, when he is an hour old or a minute old or a minute before he was born or an hour before he was born? Could they take his life a day before, a week before, or a month before, or a trimester before?

When could you decide that this child's life could be ended, and do so within a moral framework rather than a framework of maybe self- interest?

I concluded that there was only one moment, only one instant. We have to choose that moment when life begins. There is only one, and that is the moment of conception. We all know that. I knew it in 1973. I am sure I knew it before then, but I hadn't thought about it very much.

And here we are today and we know. We know by the benefit of ultrasound. We are watching little babies squirm around in the womb. We are watching them yawn and stretch and suck their thumbs and try to talk and stretch themselves and belch and do all the things inside the womb that they do pretty shortly when they get outside the womb. It is life. It is miraculous life. Little hands, little feet, little fingers, a little nose, little eyes. They are little babies that are defenseless.

This Congress has allowed a Supreme Court to impose abortion on demand in America, and we have worked to put together very few limitations on that abortion on demand. I don't think we have done enough, either, to send the message to America that life begins at the moment of conception. But ultrasound has shown many of us in this country--millions of us--that life does exist inside the womb.

We know that we can, even with a transabdominal ultrasound, verify a heartbeat in 7 to 8 weeks from conception. In 7 to 9 weeks, that little baby is formed by then with a beating heart. We know that of those babies that have a detectable beating heart, 95 percent of those babies will experience a successful birth. It is at least 95 percent. Some say more.

So 95 percent of them, or more, are destined to experience a successful birth. Yet the most dangerous place for a baby is in the mother's womb. It is the most dangerous place because our hearts are hardened by a Supreme Court decision that some think will not change, that we have to live with it

in perpetuity and accept the consequences of 60 million Americans being aborted.

There is a hole in the population of America that is 60 billion babies strong. Some of those little girls who were aborted would be mothers by now. When you do the math on that just on the back of the envelope, that is perhaps as many as another 60 million babies--a missing 120 million Americans that would otherwise have been born in this country and had the opportunity to live, to love, to laugh, to learn, to worship, to be mothers or fathers themselves. That is what we are asking for here in this Congress with 170 cosponsors on the Heartbeat bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), one of those cosponsors who is a bit of a rare commodity himself, a conservative from California.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman gives me a little too much credit and doesn't take enough credit for himself.

That is that measure of humility I was asked about earlier today. Trent Franks always said: The funny thing about humility, about the time you think you have achieved it, you have lost it.

Mr. LaMalfa is a solid principled conservative, and I appreciate him coming to the floor to defend life. The effort that we have had is the whip team has gone out and pulled together 170 cosponsors on this bill that has set the stage for a path that I believe soon will be to the floor of the House of Representatives. Let's put the Heartbeat bill over on Mitch McConnell's desk. That is a good place for a lot of good things to have a chance to happen, even though they are a little slower at moving over there than we are over here.

One of the nimble folks who has been actively engaged in the pro-life movement in the House of Representatives is Mr. Lamborn from Colorado.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for coming to the floor to make such a strong message here on the sanctity of human life.

When I think about that heartbeat, a heartbeat is a certain indicator of life. If the baby has a beating heart, we know that baby is alive. Statistically speaking, 95 percent or more of those little babies that have a beating heart, that can be detected by an ultrasound in that 6- to 8-week period of time, 95 percent of them will experience a successful birth.

I have asked the question to those who weren't supportive of the bill: Did you ever hear the expression, ``Let's error on the side of life?''

Well, let's not error with life at all if we can help it. If we have a 95 percent chance of a successful birth, we can't take a chance on ending that little baby's life.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is a bill that has come together over the last year and a half or so. Just to mention some of the points here that I think are important is that we have at least 162 pro-life organizations and leaders that support the Heartbeat bill. I have a little demonstration here.

These are some of the organizations and leaders that support the Heartbeat bill. We have to really search pretty hard to find somebody that is not onboard.

You can go down through this list. I could read these all off, but I think it would be a little bit tiresome and maybe a little bit redundant. I put this together. This may be one-third of--or maybe even one-fourth--of the overall list of 162 pro-life organizations and leaders that support the Heartbeat bill. It is nearly universal across this country.

Of course, we don't have Planned Parenthood on here. We don't have the NARAL here. The National Abortion Rights Action League is what they used to be. They say they aren't anymore, but, yes, they are.

We have the pro-life organizations here: the people who care about life, the people who understand that human life is sacred in all of its forms, it begins at the moment of conception, that we have to protect life from that time on, and that we have a constitutional duty to do so. We have an equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution that tells us that.

But it seems as though the United States Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, upset that. They decided that a right to privacy, which was a manufactured right--I don't think I have it in my memos--but it is Griswold v. Connecticut back in the 1960s. It is a decision that a couple had a right to privacy in order to buy birth control pills. It was in Connecticut in that period of time. Shortly after that decision, they decided it wasn't just a married couple that had a right to privacy; it was an unmarried couple that had a right to privacy in the form of contraceptives. That was only in the mid- sixties.

Then Roe v. Wade came along. I think that this Court can never be defended for the decision that they made, the idea that privacy trumps life, and that the privacy of a mother will allow for an abortion at any stage, is how this all came together between Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

But even some of our professors that you might think have been on the other side of the issue had their skepticism. In fact, there is a bit of it here in Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a statement that she made in 1985. Our Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg said:

Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a

judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the

extreme statute before the court. Heavyhanded judicial

intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have

provoked, not resolved, the conflict.

I would restate the Fourteenth Amendment. It says this: ``No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.''

This comes back to personhood. I believe that a conceived baby from that moment is a person. We don't have the technical medical ability to define that moment at this point, Mr. Speaker, but we can define ``heartbeat,'' and we have done so in the Heartbeat Protection Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus), who has been a leader and a fighter for life since back in the 1980s or so, when I was still in the crib.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his eloquent words.

I hadn't heard the description delivered by Governor Casey in those years back. But Governor Bob Casey--God rest his soul--captured my attention years ago, 20 or more years ago. I had a quote from Governor Bob Casey, a Democrat, that I had on my bulletin board that I don't have to look up anymore. And it was this:

Human life cannot be measured. It is the measure itself

against which all other things are weighed.

It rang so clear and true to me that I cut it out of the magazine and stuck it up on the bulletin board. His words echo in this Chamber today. I wish they echoed in his son over in the Senate the same way they echoed out of the mouth of Governor Bob Casey back in those days when he was denied the opportunity to speak before the Democratic National Convention because he is pro-life. And we look today and we see this issue has been more and more polarized. I hope that we can be more broad with this and that we can be more bipartisan than we are.

We do have bipartisan cosponsorship on this bill. It is narrow, but it exists.

I urge, Mr. Speaker, this body to take this bill to the floor. 170 cosponsors is further ahead than any comparable piece of pro-life legislation. To have that many cosponsors and a good number of other Members who have said, ``I am not ready to sign on the dotted line, but you bring it to the floor, and I will vote `yes,' '' I think we get to ``yes,'' but we need to bring it here.

There are concerns that, well, if we pass it off the floor of the House, the Senate won't take it up. Well, we know they won't take it up if we don't pass it off the floor of the House.

There is concern about the Supreme Court. Of course there is. We have to challenge the Court. We are going to live with the 1 million abortions a year in this country until we are willing to challenge the Court and do so successfully.

I believe, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to see one or two more appointments to this Court in the next 2 or 3 or more years, and we need to get the bill off the floor, onto the desk of Leader McConnell so that it has a chance then to go to the President's desk, where I am very confident that President Trump will sign the bill. And then it has a chance to go--I am happy with it not being litigated, but we expect it will be litigated like every other effective piece of pro-life legislation.

I appreciate the attention tonight, Mr. Speaker, and the speakers who have come to the floor to weigh in for innocent, unborn human life and to lay out the path for the future that we have to follow here if we are to answer to God and country for that gift from God, which is life, in the first priority, then liberty, then the pursuit of happiness.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 1 minute p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 7, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege and honor to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and I appreciate the honor and the privilege to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor here tonight to talk to you and address the body about the issue that is so important to so many millions of Americans, and that is the issue of life, the issue of protecting innocent, unborn human life that doesn't have the ability to speak out for itself, doesn't have the ability to scream for its own mercy, but it does have the ability to squirm and move and belch and do all the things that we do outside the womb and can feel pain, a beating heart, and a throbbing heart of a heartbeat.

I mentioned this on the floor here a couple weeks ago of an ultrasound that was sent to me with a little baby with 158 beats per minute.

I would take people through some of the pro-life legislation that has been moved or attempted to be moved here in the United States Congress, Mr. Speaker. I would take you back to 1973 and Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Those two Supreme Court cases, working in conjunction with each other, essentially translated into abortion on demand. We saw abortions go from about 35,000 abortions a year in America, a number that I would say I thought was horrible then, to something like 1.6 million abortions in America, now ratcheted down with the weight of the conscience of our society to some number about 1 million or maybe a little bit less than 1 million.

Mr. Speaker, we don't get to count that difference between 1.6 million, roughly the peak, and a little under 1 million as 600,000 babies saved every year. Instead, it goes on our conscience the other way. That is a cumulative total of 60 million babies who have been sacrificed at the alter of this subject called pro-choice, judicial activism.

I remind you, Mr. Speaker, that human life is protected in our United States Constitution. It is protected under the 14th Amendment, and we have a constitutional right here in Congress to protect and defend life. In fact, I believe we have a duty to protect and defend life.

So I would first take us to that case of Roe v. Wade, and Doe v. Bolton, and the two cases taken together, January 22, 1973, and we have marched every year since then, including just last month on January 19.

But essentially this: Roe v. Wade was a case that was built on several Supreme Court precedents, but the one that strikes me the most is the Griswold v. Connecticut case. That was back in the mid 1960s sometime, maybe 1964, where Connecticut had outlawed contraceptives. They were a strong Catholic State at the time, and so they outlawed contraceptives.

Griswold went to court and said: No. We are married. We should be able to buy contraceptives, and the State of Connecticut shouldn't interfere in that.

So the Supreme Court manufactured this thing called a right to privacy, which was the privacy was protected by contraceptive activities within the marriage. So that case went in as a precedent case that established the right to privacy.

And then there was a follow-up case, and that would be the Eisenstadt case, that said: Well, it doesn't matter whether you are married, you have got a right to privacy whether you are married or not, so you should be able to buy contraceptives if you are cohabiting rather than being joined together in holy matrimony. The Supreme Court found in their favor in that case.

And then, not that long later, 1973, here comes Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Roe v. Wade says: Well, there is a right to privacy, so I guess if we are not going to interfere with reproductive choices of married couples or nonmarried couples, then we are not going to interfere with whether they want to terminate the life of that innocent, beautiful, miraculous little baby.

So they came down with the decision that a right to privacy was more important than the right to life. And on this floor, Mr. Speaker, I brought this issue up numerous times to remind the body that our Declaration of Independence articulated this very clearly. It laid out the parameters for our Constitution. Our Constitution reflects those parameters in the Declaration.

So there is a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And those are prioritized rights. The priority is this: life is paramount. It can't be subordinate to anybody's liberty, and somebody's pursuit of happiness can't trample on anyone's liberty or their life.

Yet the Court decided this right to privacy, this liberty, this right to privacy that was manufactured in Griswold v. Connecticut in roughly a decade or less earlier, was more important than the right of the life of the innocent unborn.

And then they got into the concept of viability. But Doe v. Bolton is the one that gave essentially the broad license. The viability piece says: Well, can a baby survive at the end of the first trimester? No. The end of the second trimester? Probably not. But into the third trimester? That became more likely.

Yet even that didn't protect that innocent, unborn baby because Doe v. Bolton put these exceptions in here for the health of the mother, and that was defined and included the physical health, the emotional health, the psychological health, the familial health, and age-related factors.

So if you get into the emotional health, that is impacted by mental stability. It is impacted by cash flow. It is impacted by anything. What it amounts to is that this long list carried within it someplace there that anybody could look at it and say: Well, that's a license to abort a baby under any circumstance anytime, provided that the mother just simply wants the abortion.

And we, just a little over a year ago, saw a President leave office who stood on the floor of the Illinois State Senate and, multiple times, took the position that if a woman goes to an abortionist and wants an abortion, if the baby survives the abortion, she still has a right to a dead baby.

And by the way, all the people speaking over here a little bit ago all voted

against the bill that protected a baby who was born alive and survives an abortion.

And it is abhorrent to me to think that you would abort a baby. But the second thing is that if that baby survives the abortion, to go forward and kill that baby anyway or put that baby off in a cold room until that baby freezes to death, close the door, shut off the sound, plug your ears, and come back and check in an hour or two or five and see if it is done.

It is an appalling place that this country has gone. Sixty million babies. And I have supported every piece of pro-life legislation that has come before this Congress, including the Born-Alive bill. I support the ban on abortions for sex selection. I support the Pain-Capable bill, which passed the House here last October and went over to the Senate where, thankfully, the Senate had a vote on the Pain-Capable bill, and it failed, and we knew it would fail.

But it did establish that there is a pro-life majority, at least under those parameters, in the United States Senate. And I believe there will be some Senators who are held accountable for that vote.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make it clear that I believe this: I believe that life begins at the moment of conception, begins at fertilization. From that point forward, it is a unique being that is growing and multiplying and shaping; and within about 18 days, we have scientific evidence that the heart starts to beat. We know that there is nerve activity.

We know that that baby--by about 20 weeks, it is clear, and I say it is actually irrefutable, that the baby feels pain. We have watched them in ultrasound move around in the womb and squirm.

We held a hearing last November 1 where we watched probably the youngest witness to ever testify before the United States Congress, and his name is Lincoln Glen Miller. This little boy was 18 weeks into development, and we watched him on ultrasound as he jerked his arm towards his face, sucked his thumb, moved his lips like he was trying to talk to us, squirmed around.

This little guy, Lincoln Glen Miller, showed us the humanity inside the womb here in this United States Congress for the first time.

So at the funeral of Phyllis Schlafly, who, prior to her death, was a living, breathing icon, a very principled individual, someone who was the clearest thinker of our time, I read most all of Phyllis' writings and followed her closely and counted her as a friend, and she has had a powerful impact upon this country, but at her funeral, Janet Porter of Faith2Action and I sat down and talked about something that Phyllis had asked: Would I bring a Heartbeat bill to the floor of the House of Representatives and push it through for a vote here on the floor successfully? Phyllis never wanted to do anything unsuccessfully, and I don't either, Mr. Speaker--and send it over to the Senate and work to nurture it over there so it can get to the President's desk for a signature, because we have gone through 45 years of incrementalism. Forty-five years of a little bill here, a little bill there, that saved a few lives here and a few lives there.

Henry Hyde, the leader in the pro-life movement, and he was a glorious man who I had the privilege to serve with here in this Congress, and I enjoyed that time with him, Henry Hyde brought the Hyde amendment, and that extrapolated into the Mexico City policy. The Hyde amendment, coupled with the Mexico City policy, has saved 1 million lives, perhaps as many as 2 million lives, during that period of time.

I was involved in the ban on partial-birth abortion, and there we first saw the Supreme Court overturn our ban on partial-birth abortion, that ghastly tactic of turning a baby around in the womb and delivering the baby breech, feet first, until that baby's head and face are still inside the mother, and then poking a pair of scissors or a scalpel into the back of that baby's head and sticking a suction in and sucking the brains out to collapse the skull and removing the balance of that baby as that baby squirmed for mercy until the brain tissue was emptied from his skull.

Mr. Speaker, that sickening and ghastly and ghoulish tactic was outlawed by this Congress, and it went to circuit courts around the country. And those circuit courts found it unconstitutional because they couldn't overturn Roe v. Wade or Doe v. Bolton, so it came to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, in the first round of the ban on partial-birth abortion, found that killing a baby in that ghastly fashion was entirely constitutional because Congress had failed to precisely define to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court the act of partial-birth abortion, and had failed to demonstrate by congressional findings that a partial-birth abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother.

Mr. Speaker, we went back to work. We went back to the Judiciary Committee and we held hearings before the Judiciary Committee, hearing after hearing after hearing. We got out the word processor again--it was a word processor in those days--and we precisely defined the act of partial-birth abortion.

When I describe it here, it is more ghastly than I have ever spoken publicly, and I regret the damage that it does to the ears and the psyche of the people who are listening tonight, Mr. Speaker, but it needs to be said. We defined that act absolutely, precisely, from a medical perspective, and we had a lot of sets of eyes and ears on it to weigh in on all approaches that we could do. And with those hearings, medical doctor after medical doctor came through and testified. In the end, we had congressional findings that concluded definitively that a partial-birth abortion was never medically necessary to save the life of the mother.

So we defined the act. We proved it was never necessary to save the life of the mother. We passed the legislation, House and Senate, and it went off to be litigated again to three separate Federal circuits, one of them in Lincoln, Nebraska, which I attended in front of Judge Kopf. I will not forget that. But each of those circuits all found that our bill was unconstitutional in partial-birth abortion, not because we didn't define the act precisely enough, and not because our congressional findings weren't that, but because they did prove that it was never necessary for a partial-birth abortion to save the life of the mother.

They found our second bill unconstitutional because of the precedent called stare decisis. Stare decisis is the precedent that the court respects a previous decision. So anybody who thinks that there is a piece of pro-life legislation that will save any lives, that is going to be upheld at the lower court level, is, I think, barking up the wrong tree.

It is not going to happen that any lower court and lower Federal court in the United States is going to overturn a Supreme Court decision, because they will respect stare decisis, the decision of the Supreme Court. And there are too many Justices who have served in the past on the Supreme Court who would also honor that stare decisis decision.

If a similar case comes before them, they would look at the decisions that were made before and say: Well, I guess the court has already resolved this. There is no reason for us to relook at this. There is going to be no de novo review. It is simply going to be whatever the court has decided in the past. We are not going to challenge that going forward. We will build all case law on the case law that is behind us as we go forward.

That is an adherence to stare decisis and that is what we must overturn if we are ever to put an end to abortion in this country.

That is why we have written legislation in the Heartbeat bill that is designed to challenge Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and ask a new Supreme Court, after we pass the Heartbeat legislation, H.R. 490, and bring it to this floor, get this vote, and pass it over to the Senate. When the day comes that we have got the votes in the House and Senate and we have a President that will sign the legislation--today, if we could get there--and a Vice President that seems to be enthusiastic about this--and I notice that the political adviser for the President, Kellyanne Conway, had a heartbeat pin on her dress as she spoke just a week or so ago.

I appreciate that support that is there.

But with the votes that are here now in this House, and the votes that need to be compiled in the Senate, and a Presidential signature, we can ban abortion. If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby shall be protected.

That is the Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490. But when it is passed--I pray to God it is and soon--it will go to the lower courts because the pro- abortion lobby will litigate everything. Nothing seems to get to their conscience. They will litigate it. And we don't expect to win at the lower court level. It all has to go to the Supreme Court.

When we designed this path for this legislation, it was designed for a pro-life majority in the House, which we have; a pro-life majority in the Senate, which was proven just a week ago we have; and a President that will sign that legislation, a pro-life President who said just a few days ago that he is a pro-life President again. I appreciate that reinforcement.

We designed it for all of that with the expectations it would go before not the court at the time we wrote the bill and not the court now--perhaps the court now, but more likely a court that would be formed by a subsequent appointment or two made by this President, Donald Trump. All of that needs to be lined up for the Heartbeat bill to have success. And we should remember that. This isn't a function of waiting for the Supreme Court to be where we think it is favorable alone.

It is, instead, a function that there has to be four windows that are opened in the right sequence and we have to fly through those windows. So the first window is open right now: the House of Representatives. We just need a Speaker and a majority leader that will schedule the vote here on the floor, with 170 cosponsors on this legislation, and a good long list of folks who want to vote for the bill that just weren't ready to sign on yet.

We will get there, Mr. Speaker. That is window number one. We have got to fly the Heartbeat bill through window number one, and then send it over to the Senate. And we have got to fly the Heartbeat bill through window number two. That is harder. It is harder with the filibuster rule, a 60-vote majority. But with 60 million lives at stake, maybe the 60-vote majority is not such a requirement.

Perhaps they would be willing to waive that long tradition for the purpose of saving lives. That will be my argument. We have got 60 million lives we have lost in this country and you are requiring 60 votes in the Senate, and that sets the stage for another 60 million lives to be aborted if you can't get rid of that filibuster rule and let a simple majority pass something through the Senate.

The window in the House is open now. The window in the Senate can be opened if the Heartbeat bill goes over there. The window at the White House is open right now. And the court is going to take a little time. But if we sit back and we decide we don't want to send something out this window of the House because we don't think that the Senate is ready--the President is ready, by the way--or if we don't think the court is ready, then there will be a window closed and it will be too late.

We have got to move this legislation through. It is H.R. 490, the Heartbeat bill that says this: that before an abortionist can ply his trade, he must first check for a heartbeat. And if a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. It is that simple, that clear. And we have the technology now that shows that definitive heartbeat on ultrasound, where you can watch the baby move and squirm and gurgle and suck its thumb and try to talk, and do all of those loveable things.

We have the technology that shows that in ultrasound. We have a take- home kit where you can listen to the heartbeat of your baby. I get them texted to me from young ladies who are moms already and they are already bonding with this unborn baby. That technology says that, at about 6 weeks, we can determine the definitive nature of that heartbeat. And if that heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected.

Mr. Speaker, here is the problem that we have: 170 Members signed onto this bill and another good bunch of them want this bill to come to the floor and they want to vote on it. The will of the people is reflected through the United States Congress, especially the House of Representatives. Unelected people on the outside of this Congress are the ones who are holding this bill back.

When I talk to the leadership up the line and I say, ``I want to vote on the Heartbeat bill and so do 170 Members who signed on and multiple others who want to vote for it,'' the will of this Congress is clear, but the leadership says, ``We don't want to divide the pro-life community. We want to make sure that the pro-life community is unanimous in this before we move legislation.''

I think that is an old rule that was put in place. It wouldn't be my rule.

So the top organizations along the way would be National Right to Life, the oldest and largest pro-life organization in the country. Now, I have named them. I can name every other organization from Family Research Council to Susan B. Anthony List, to Faith to Action, on down the line. And I will name a bunch of them a little later this evening, Mr. Speaker. Every other organization that I name supports this bill.

The only organization that doesn't support it is National Right to Life. National Right to Life, protecting Americans since 1968. The oldest pro-life organization, the largest pro-life organization.

I say: We need you on this bill because it is not going to move until you say you support it or the rest of Congress rises up in a very strong way.

So here is their answer. They tweeted this out here a little while back: ``National Right to Life does not oppose the Heartbeat bill.''

That was their message: ``. . . does not oppose. . . .''

But in order for a piece of pro-life legislation to move--according to what I think is an archaic rule--it has to be unanimous.

So that means Family Research Council, Susan B. Anthony List, and National Right to Life, if they all say, ``We like this bill; we want to move it,'' then H.R. 490, the Heartbeat bill, moves. If they don't say they like the bill, it is a de facto veto that blocks the bill.

So the will of 170 Members who signed on, and a good number of folks who are willing to vote for the bill who didn't sign on, the will of the American people reflected in this constitutional Republic that we are, is all being stifled and frustrated by one organization. It happens to be the oldest and the largest pro-life organization in the United States of America: the National Right to Life. Since 1968, they say: ``National Right to Life does not oppose the Heartbeat bill.'' That is H.R. 490. There is no doubt about that.

I have had my conversations with Carol Tobias, and I have had my conversations with David O'Steen. By the way, not in person, only by phone. We couldn't get an in-person meeting. But a couple of their lawyers came in and we had that conversation, too. They all say the same thing. They all say: Well, our board doesn't like the Heartbeat bill and doesn't support the Heartbeat bill, so we can't act unless our board tells us to act.

I asked: So when was your last board meeting?

They said: Oh, several months ago. And there won't be another one until after the March for Life.

This conversation took place the first week in December.

So call a special board meeting because this is important. The Heartbeat bill grew a lot more momentum than you ever thought it was going to. It wasn't your idea, I know. I will give it to you as an idea if that is what National Right to Life wants. They can't meet with their board. They can't call a board meeting. They can't poll their board. They have to wait until the next scheduled board meeting.

Who are these board members?

I don't know. Fifty of them.

Mr. Speaker, can you imagine 50 dedicated pro-life people in America who are on the board of National Right to Life and all of them sitting there intransigently saying, ``Nope, I don't want to see the Heartbeat bill move. It is not something I want to do. I don't support protecting babies from the moment that a heartbeat can be detected''?

How in the world is it that you are the preeminent right to life organization in the country and the best you can say is you do not oppose the Heartbeat bill?

The real truth is, if you don't oppose it, neither do you support it. What it really means is the National Right to Life does not support the Heartbeat bill for whatever those reasons are, Mr. Speaker.

And I would sure like to know. Because I think if you truly are pro- life, then there wouldn't be a way you could sit there and say: I don't want to protect the babies that have a heartbeat.

In fact, if I look through their tweets and their literature, and they are full of references to heartbeat.

And I will get to that in a little bit, Mr. Speaker. But I wanted to hear from the gentleman from Texas and set the stage a little bit here. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. Speaker, I so much thank the gentleman from Texas for that, indeed, heartfelt description of what it was like, that miracle little child who also is intelligent and beautiful as well as a world-class artist.

Mr. Speaker, I stand here, and I don't understand National Right to Life either. This is exactly what they are formed for. The Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490, is an exact fit, as near as I can determine, into their very mission statement. I made it a point to look up that mission statement, and I happen to have it here.

The National Right to Life mission statement, Mr. Speaker, goes this way: ``The mission of the National Right to Life is to protect and defend the most fundamental right of humankind, the right to life of every innocent human being from the beginning of life until natural death.''

Now, if that is the National Right to Life's position and mission, ``from the beginning of life until natural death,'' I certainly support that. I don't think we disagree on when life begins. But one might read that statement literally to say ``from the beginning of life until natural death'' may be National Right to Life's position is something other than the moment of fertilization or the moment of conception on when life begins because the mission statement doesn't say ``from the fertilization until natural death'' or ``conception until natural death.'' It says, ``from the beginning of life until natural death.''

But I dig a little deeper. On their website, they have a statement that starts with a question: When does life begin?

It answers its question this way: The life of a baby begins long before he or she is born. A new individual human being begins at fertilization when the sperm and ovum meet to form a single cell.

Perfect. I agree with that answer.

So the mission is to protect and defend the most fundamental right of humankind, the right to life of every innocent human being, from the beginning of life to natural death, the National Right to Life's mission statement, and they define the beginning of life as when, at fertilization, the sperm and ovum meet to form a single cell.

There should be no argument any longer on where National Right to Life stands. They should be standing for protecting all innocent life, from fertilization to natural death.

It is a fine, honorable position, and the history of National Right to Life has actually spoken to the heartbeat issue in the Heartbeat bill.

For example, there was a Heartbeat bill that passed out of the North Dakota State Legislature back in 2009. It went to a Federal circuit court. It was not upheld by that Federal circuit court. Just as I described a little earlier, the lower courts will not overturn a decision made by the Supreme Court. It has to be appealed to the Supreme Court level. This was not. But they were supporting the Heartbeat bill then.

So they are on record supporting the Heartbeat bill, and here are a number of other times on their positions on heartbeat.

Heartbeat has been showing up pretty often in the information that has come out of the National Right to Life. I would point out again their lead, Carol Tobias or David O'Steen.

This is February, 5, 2013, Right to Life's tweet that went out. It is @NRLC, if you want to send them a message. It says: An unborn child's heartbeat is ``the most beautiful music,'' says Beyonce.

I looked that up because I wondered what that was. Beyonce was pregnant. She actually had a miscarriage and lost that child. She loved that child before that child was born. I don't have any doubts that her heart was broken.

But she said: An unborn child's heartbeat is ``the most beautiful music.''

That is posted on National Right to Life's Twitter page. That is February 2013.

Here is a July 2013 Tweet from them: Unborn babies can feel pain, they can dream, they have a heartbeat, they respond to their mother's voice. Abortion ends their life.

It looks like National Right to Life understands the importance of a heartbeat. I think they know something that I think I also know: that beating heart is in our ears now.

Many of us have heard that beating heart on ultrasound. When we hear that on ultrasound, we know that that is life. We also know that if that heartbeat can be detected and the baby is protected, that baby has at least a 95 percent chance of a successful birth.

So that is how viable that baby is at 6 weeks with a heartbeat.

Here is another Tweet, September 24, 2014, from Right to Life's Twitter account: Listen to an unborn baby's heartbeat at just 6 weeks.

Just the amount of time I gave it.

Another heartbeat message, going on down the line, this is 2014, also, a Right to Life tweet: Did you know, babies by 20 weeks can feel pain? They already have a heartbeat and detectable brainwaves by then.

That is the Pain-Capable bill that just failed in the Senate.

Heartbeat about 6 weeks. So they are telling us this heartbeat matters. A heartbeat is a sure sign of life. If there is a heart beating there, there is a live baby there--a baby with a 95 percent chance, or better, of a successful birth.

Moving on in 2014, also. Here is Carol Tobias, the lead in the National Right to Life. She tweets out on this day, 24 March 2014: New smartphone appcessory allows moms to hear unborn child's heartbeat.

I am glad that we noticed this. It is important that we know that. That is the place where these heartbeat sounds have been texted to me from young mothers who are at 6, 7, or 8 weeks along. They will send me the sound of that heartbeat. It comes on my phone, and I can open that up and I can hear that heartbeat surging at, say, 158 beats per minute. That is one of the most precious things that came to me about 2\1/2\ weeks ago; 158 beats per minute.

Here is the next tweet, February 2015. This is an abortionist. The National Right to Life's tweet is quoting an

abortionist who said: ``I know that the fetus is alive during the process''--meaning the process of abortion--``. . . I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound.''

I can see the heartbeat on the ultrasound.

That abortionist stops that beating heart that ends the life of that baby. But this is why Right to Life put this up. They know that heartbeat beats also in our conscience. It beats in theirs.

They want to stop abortions. That is their mission statement. They are the oldest organization in the country, the largest organization in the country. The Heartbeat bill couldn't more perfectly fit their mission statement, their cause for being, or the messages that come out here time after time in what one would presume would be laying down the predicate for the Heartbeat bill itself.

Here is another one from Right to Life. Their tweet says: I have a heartbeat.

It is a baby.

It continues: I have detectable brainwaves. I can feel pain. Don't I deserve human rights?

Yes, as soon as we can possibly provide them and stop this carnage of abortion. Don't I deserve the human right to life, is what this quote is, the National Right to Life.

Going on to another tweet, this one is in November of 2017. There is a continuum here that brings this through to 2017. The National Right to Life's tweet says: Did you know an unborn child's heartbeat starts around 20 days into a pregnancy? Most mothers don't even know they are pregnant by that time.

It is not easily detectable. It is not detectable by the technology we call for in the Heartbeat bill, but that is how early that is.

The Knights of Columbus has put up billboards that say: My heart began beating at 18 days.

We all start small. Abortion stops a beating heart.

Heart, heart, heart. It rings in our conscience. It should ring in the conscience of National Right to Life.

Here is National Right to Life in their tweets: Heartbeat; heartbeat; heartbeat; heartbeat; heartbeat.

Why not support the Heartbeat bill? You are actually doing so verbally here, but you go back to this canard: the National Right to Life does not want to--they want to say oppose; but, instead, I say it is more appropriate to say do not support the Heartbeat bill. Why?

It is beyond my comprehension how an organization that has these kind of convictions cannot be supporting the Heartbeat bill.

We have polling that tells us where this stands. It is a majority opinion all the way across the board. In a Barna poll taken in 2017, 69 percent of adults support the Heartbeat bill. Actually, it has slightly more polling support than the Pain-Capable bill that has already passed the House and just failed in the Senate, but with a majority vote.

Sixty-nine percent of adults support the Heartbeat bill, 86 percent of Republicans, and 55 percent of Democrats. Even pro-choice/pro- abortion Democrats, the people who vote for them, support them, also support the Heartbeat bill with what we call a landslide level, if it were an election, and 61 percent of Independents.

Eighty-six percent of Republicans support Heartbeat, 55 percent of Democrats, and 61 percent of Independents support the Heartbeat bill. We are getting down to the place here where it is making even less and less sense that National Right to Life would not support the Heartbeat bill.

There is another big set of reasons here. Mr. Speaker, this isn't the whole set of reasons. This is maybe half, maybe not quite half the set of reasons.

Not only 170 Members of Congress have signed onto this bill, and a good number of them that will vote for it on the whip card on top of that, but 130 pro-life organizations and leaders support the Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490.

You can't read this from very far away because we tried to jam as many names on there as we could. There is another sheet and probably at least another one behind that. It is 130 pro-life organizations.

We look down through that, and who are we missing?

I couldn't come up with anybody that we were missing, as far as supporting this, other than the National Right to Life.

I am looking on top here. Here is Susan B. Anthony List at the top of the list. Here is Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council. These are the top three organizations right here that some have referred to as the Holy Trinity that control pro-life legislation and whether it comes to the United States Congress or not, whether the will of the people can be realized as being stuck right here in red.

So we put this in red. I held this back and reserved this spot on the sheet for Carol Tobias of the National Right to Life. Just pick up the phone and call the Speaker is all, Mr. Speaker, that Carol Tobias needs to do and the Heartbeat bill comes to the floor of the House and the will of the people can be reflected. It can go over to the Senate, it can sit on Mitch McConnell's desk, and they can have a vote over there and we will find out where those Senators all are. If it doesn't pass on the floor of the Senate, there might just be some new Senators sent in who will protect innocent, unborn human life.

So I can go down the list. Lila Rose, the president of Life Action, a strong supporter, enthusiastic supporter of the Heartbeat bill. Tom McCluskey, March for Life. We have sat down and had a conversation. He is supporting of this.

Then we have got Kristan Hawkins, the president of Student for Life. On down the line. Anita Staver, president of the Liberty Council; Ed Martin, president of the Phyllis Schlafly's organization, Eagle Forum. He is the Eagle's president. He solidly supports the Heartbeat Bill. In fact, he was there in that church that day that we put that plan together and has been a driving force.

But the real, strongest driving force of all is Janet Porter, the president of Faith2Action. Janet Porter really carried this in the State of Ohio. I went to Ohio to help conclude that. What we found out in the State of Ohio is that not only did the Heartbeat bill pass in Ohio, Mr. Speaker, but it passed over the resistance of the local affiliate of National Right to Life.

They will tell me, and David O'Steen told me, they are not in control of their State organizations. You heard Congressman Gohmert address that, also. The State organizations kind of run their own show.

But when it was resisted in Ohio, it made no sense. They lobbied John Kasich to veto the bill. Why?

Under the grounds that it would be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Ohio. Seriously?

Do we go through all that work and then just decide we are going to preempt the court decision, pass a law, sign it into law, and save the babies' lives?

Every step we take along the way saves lives.

Keith Rothfus made an argument that I want to give him credit for. He said that even just debating the Heartbeat bill saves lives, because the debate causes people to talk about it, to think about it differently, and to make different decisions about the lives that they are in charge of protecting, and that is the innocent unborn lives.

So here we are with 130 pro-life organizations and leaders supporting the Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490. We look down through this list--and I will put it all public, if it needs be, Mr. Speaker--but I saved a spot up here in red for Carol Tobias and David O'Steen and the National Right to Life. Just give us a call. Send me an email, a text. Pick up the phone. Call the Speaker. We will move this bill, and we will save lives together.

Meanwhile, if that doesn't happen, I am going to continue to ask the question: How in the world can you not support this bill?

How in the world can the Nation's preeminent pro-life organization, the National Right to Life, who says they do not oppose the Heartbeat bill, and I say they do not support the Heartbeat bill, how can that be?

How can you form 50 people on a board of directors, all of them pledged and dedicated to your mission statement to protect life from the beginning of life to natural death, and not find one among those 50 who support the Heartbeat bill, when 170 cosponsors are already on it here in the House of Representatives and multiple others are

standing up ready to vote for the bill, and not one among your board supports the Heartbeat bill?

There is something wrong. There is something wrong inside an organization.

Those statements came both from Carol Tobias and David O'Steen. Maybe there were a couple along the way, there is a little clause in there, but generally this: Who on your board supports the bill?

You can't name any. That is essentially it.

If that is the case, Mr. Speaker, then there is something seriously wrong in the National Right to Life and something that seriously needs to be corrected because there are babies who must be protected. If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected, and we need the support of the entire pro-life community in order to get this legislation moved out of the House and over to the Senate, to the President's desk.

It will eventually get before a Supreme Court. We will eventually have one or two more appointments to that Supreme Court. It has got a shot today. It is clearly more constitutional than the pain-capable legislation because it is precisely drafted with these things all in mind. It is a solid case to go before the Supreme Court.

I would say, instead, there is no reason to litigate it, but I kind of think it will be because the enemies to life litigate everything that saves and protects lives. But these little babies are too precious, they are too unique, they are too miraculous for us to waste a minute in protecting their lives. I want every little baby that has got a heartbeat, have every little baby have that chance to be born, that chance to live, to love, to laugh, to learn, to worship, to be a parent of its own, and to be a gift from God to this country, to this planet, and to posterity. That is the miracle of every little child.

When Congressman Gohmert spoke of being able to hold his little daughter in one hand, that sacred, protected little girl now has grown into a glorious and beautiful and intelligent woman who is contributing to this society and to this world, and that is true for everyone where all give glory to God. But 60 million babies--60 million babies--cannot continue. We have to put an end to this atrocity of abortion.

The Heartbeat bill, H.R. 490, does that, and there is only one entity standing in the way, and that is National Right to Life. And I plead with you, and I pray that you will come around to support. Your history says that is who you are and what you do, and it is time, now, to get on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address two issues that are of great concern to the security and status of Taiwan, a long- time great friend and ally of the United States. First, I am deeply concerned about reports that Beijing has modified the use of civil aviation flight routes in the Taiwan Strait without consultation with Taiwan authorities. Such unilateral actions are unacceptable to all that desire stability and peace in the region. Issues related to civil aviation and safety in the Taiwan Strait should be decided through dialogue between both sides. I encourage authorities in Beijing to engage those in Taipei in constructive dialogue, on the basis of dignity and respect.

Second, I reiterate my support for Taiwan to regain its observer status in the World Health Organization (WHO). As you know, statehood is not a requirement for attendance at the World Health Assembly (WHA)--the decision-making body of the WHO--and so there is no legitimate reason to exclude Taiwan. The People's Republic of China (PRC) is but one nation in the community of many belonging to the WHO and WHA, and should not get to dictate participation to the rest of the body. It is simply not right to treat Taiwan in this way when they contribute so generously to the world, through its role in sectors such as healthcare and international humanitarian aid. Just this month, this House passed H.R. 3320, in support of Taiwan's observer status in the WHO, on suspension by voice vote. This vote is evidence of this body's strong support for Taiwan, which I share and endorse wholeheartedly.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to registering more votes to support and bolster Taiwan's security and status in the world. I am also confident that if we continue to enhance our bilateral relationship, this dynamic partnership that we've built together will continue to thrive in the future, and liberty will increase worldwide.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz) for yielding to me. I appreciate the gentleman for taking the lead on this issue back some weeks or months ago to bring a resolution to the House Judiciary Committee to call for special counsel to more broadly investigate all of the defugalties that have been taking place in this country, driven by political partisanship on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, I look back and I think about what the attitude was of President Trump--actually, even before the election and shortly after-- when I listened to him, and he more or less expressed this sentiment, which was that, with Hillary Clinton and her transgressions and the way she had handled the classified material and up to the secret server next to the bathroom up in New York in her place, essentially, the President's position was that we need to move America forward. We should not be dug deeply into going backwards on this or looking back over our shoulder. Let's move forward. The public has litigated this in the election.

Now, I think that is where President Trump wanted it to be, but it wasn't to be because the left could not accept the idea that the American people had spoken. They began to manufacture and continue the manufacture this Russian investigation, these allegations that were collusion allegations with the Russians to try to manipulate an American election.

I don't think anybody doubts that the Russians made some effort at that, but all of us doubt that they had any impact whatsoever on our election. Those of us, at least on this side of the aisle, have seen zero information and zero evidence that the campaign of President Trump had any kind of relationship that went on with the Russians, that promoted it or colluded in any way. But because there needed to be some explanation for this phenomenal Presidential election of Donald Trump, we had to be drug back into this Russian investigation over and over again. Now, this began within 2 weeks of the President's election, after about November 8 or so.

Then as that unfolded, Mr. Speaker, then we saw what was really going on here. We got into about February or March of last year. At that point, I said: They are not going to relent on this Russian investigation business. They are going to continue to belabor this point. The election has already been settled and it is not in question, as far as the results of the polls are concerned. We have a President. Let's honor the President. Let's honor the will of the American people. Let's respect the decision made at the polls.

But, instead, the pressure continued on and on, allegations complicit with the mainstream media, the fake news, as we have now finally come to know them, I think, by habit and fact. At that point, I said: If they will not let up, then it is going to be an obligation to dig and drill deeply into all of the things that bring us together, from Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner all the way across the board, from Hillary and the sham investigation, the questioning of her on July 2, 2016, on and on

throughout the whole spectrum of things.

It became an obligation to drill to the complete bottom of all of the allegations that had been made from the investigation that surely didn't look legitimate to us, as Mr. Gaetz and I and others on the Judiciary Committee began to question people from the FBI and the people from the Justice Department and, at that time, James Comey, the Director of the FBI. We put those pieces together.

Each one of those little incidents that were testified to kind of stood up okay on their own, but when you put them together in the string of it had to be an unbelievable string of coincidences that were presented before the Judiciary Committee and the other committees here on the Hill, it became clear to us, initiated by Mr. Gaetz, that we need to go much more deeply into this and much more quickly. A good number of us supported a resolution to call for special counsel.

Now, I support the idea of an additional special counsel to broaden this. I would write the language even more broadly than the original resolution. But we should keep in mind what is going on on this Hill today, that is, that there are, by my count, at least, seven different congressional committees that are investigating this broad picture of the subject matter that we are discussing here today.

On top of that, we have Robert Mueller's investigation as a special counsel. Additionally, we have an IG investigation going on in the Justice Department under Michael Horowitz.

Michael Horowitz has a good reputation. He has about 450 investigators all together, all of whom are probably not working on this. I would be surprised if they were. So there are seven reports from committees that will eventually come out, Mr. Speaker, and one from Robert Mueller that is going to come out and one from the IG that is going to come out.

This is pretty confusing to try to understand the subject matter that they are addressing. It is defined a little bit differently from committee to committee and from the assigned investigation groups, but I will envision this:

Our Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, sits there in the Justice Department having, in an honorable way, recused himself from the Russian investigation, which keeps his hands off of that. The recommendation, as I understand that, came from Rod Rosenstein, the acting U.S. Attorney General in the event that Jeff Sessions isn't there to be the Attorney General. That was in the recommendation, by the testimony that I believe I remember, that Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from the Russian investigation, and that is the man who made the appointment of Robert Mueller.

So when I look at this whole picture, our Attorney General's job is a tough one, but it is one I think he can do better than anyone else in this country or on this planet, and that is make sense of all of these investigations, seven congressional investigations, an IG investigation, and a special counsel's investigation. That adds up to nine, by my estimation.

Now, people are human. So that says to me that these assignments of these investigations are either going to overlap or there are going to be gaps. When you have nine of them all together, there will be overlapping and there will be gaps. Where there are overlaps, there is likely to be some contradiction.

So the job of the Attorney General is to look at this whole picture and put this back together in a way that you can figure out what the contradictions are, fill in the gaps, investigate the places that haven't been investigated by the assignments of these various committees and the special counsel, and then deliver to the American people the right kind of view on the justice that needs to come. If there are indictments, to make that call for those indictments, clearly and unequivocally, based upon factual evidence.

That is why I support this memo being released in the vote of the Select Committee on Intelligence today. It is essential that the American people get to the truth. They can't absorb this truth all in one day. It has to come out a piece at a time because we are human and they are human.

So I encourage the Attorney General to keep his hand on this in the steady way that he has. I am very confident that the decisions made on the Select Committee on Intelligence are the correct ones, and I am very confident that the President will make a decision to release the memo so the American people can get at the truth. How far the truth takes us, history will write that book.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for putting this all together here this evening.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to be here on the floor of the House of Representatives to carry on some of the discussion that is taking place around this city and around this country today on March for Life day.

It would take you back 45 years ago to January 22, 1973, when the case of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton came before the United States Supreme Court. They manufactured a legal opinion out of the emanations and conundrums to quote the decision that resulted in abortion on demand in this country. Some say abortions soared up to as many as 6 million a year in some of those years in the 1970s.

America wasn't ready for such a decision. We didn't understand, in 1973, the magnitude of the decision the Supreme Court had made. We knew that it was going to open up abortion. We suspected it would be abortion on demand. We did not expect that, 45 years later, we would be here in this city still marching, marching for life, marching to defend the lives of the innocent unborn, and praying in most, if not every single church in America, to defend innocent, unborn human life.

Some of the questions that have come before us in that period of time as two generations of Americans have grown up with the guilt of abortion, with the shadow hanging over our heads, two generations of Americans have grown up having to answer this question: Is human life sacred? Is it the value, is it the measure that we put up when we evaluate all things we do?

Our Founding Fathers understood that when they laid out the original founding document of the Declaration of Independence. They wrote that we have the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, it is no coincidence that life is first in that list, Mr. Speaker. Our Founding Fathers understood that they were prioritized rights, that the right to life is paramount and that the right to life is sacred, but that liberty comes from God. He confers his God-given liberty on us, and we have to handle it responsibly. And behind that came pursuit of happiness.

Now I will take it from the bottom up, Mr. Speaker.

Pursuit of happiness was understood differently by our Founders than I think we understand it today. It seems to me that, if you go into a high school classroom, those who have been studying our founding documents--our Declaration and our Constitution and the Federalist Papers--and ask them what does ``pursuit of happiness'' mean, they

might say: ``Well, a good tailgate party,'' or ``a fun time with your friends,'' or any one of a number of other things that they do for recreation.

But, truthfully, Mr. Speaker, that is not how our Founding Fathers looked at that pursuit of happiness. They don't even call it the rich things we draw from our families, exclusively. But they understood ``pursuit of happiness'' as the term is understood in Greek, which is the foundation for that term. It is the word ``eudaimonia,'' spelled E-

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor on this. I want to make sure that people know that I am an original cosponsor of the underlying bill. I support the underlying bill. I have signed on to every piece of pro-life legislation that I can find, and I came here to save as many lives as we can.

My question out here is: What do you have to do to break out of the straightjacket of incrementalism and get to actually saving numbers of lives?

My hat is off to Jill Stanek. She brought this bill a long way. We are going to honor her today on the vote on the final passage of the bill.

But I am putting up a procedural vote, a ``no'' vote on the rule today, because we have 170 cosponsors on the Heartbeat bill. I have gone to every meeting. Nobody brought this bill up as the premier bill, and somehow, one outside organization came in and lobbied to put this ahead. It had 61 cosponsors instead of 170. There has been no hearing.

I am for the bill. Attach them both together. Let's save all the lives we can. But if nobody has the courage to step up and say what is wrong with this process, then we're never going to fix the process.

So I am going to vote ``no'' on the rule. I won't ask anybody else to do that. I will vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill, and I will go back to work to save as many lives as we possibly can.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on January 17, 2018 for being off the floor momentarily. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: Yes on Roll Call No. 021.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to vote on January 10, 2018 for an obligation at the White House. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows:

YES on Roll Call No. 10.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and I also thank the minority leader for her remarks in support of 702.

I rise in support of the 702 reauthorization. It is critical to our national security. You would see the color drain out of the faces of all of our security personnel, the entire national security community, if we lost the ability and went dark on 702.

We have got to follow through in this Congress. We have got to provide the flexibility for them to use the tools that we have available to us, and we have set up procedures that will approve of this annually under the FISA courts. We have got a probable cause requirement for any criminal investigation. That protects U.S. persons. And we don't need to be protecting anything but U.S. persons when it comes to this.

The gentlewoman spoke of civil liberties, and I stand in defense of those civil liberties as well and in defense of the national security. We have got an IG report that is written into this bill.

But I would remind the people who are concerned about this focus on these civil liberties that Google and Facebook and Verizon and AT&T, they hold more data than the U.S. Government has. That is where the real information is, and if they are concerned about that, they should raise that issue.

Meanwhile, I am going to oppose the Amash amendment and support the reauthorization of 702. Our people in this America, U.S. persons, deserve that protection for national security reasons. I urge its adoption.