Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I have heard a number of people saying today that this is not about the institution of marriage. It most certainly is about the institution of marriage. It is also how marriage is going to be defined. I somehow cannot get my mind around the concept that the Founders' idea was that a bare majority in one State court and a bare majority in the Supreme Court can redefine the word of marriage and shove that down the throats of 49 other States. Somehow that does not seem to make sense. The Democrats here have been suggesting that the Supreme Court should be totally sovereign in every decision, and that one also I find rather puzzling, because the first foray of activist judges on the Supreme Court was that brilliant decision of Dred Scott, which said that African Americans are not actually people.

Now, if every decision of the Supreme Court is gold, how about this one? And what was the result of this little act of activism? Well, they are the wonderful folks who gave us the Civil War. I just cannot understand the logic of saying and talking about the idea of separation of powers and checks and balances and at the same time say, anything the Supreme Court says goes. That is what I am hearing argued today.

The question is when the Supreme Court gets really goofy, and my friends, we can pick how goofy is goofy, but when they really start legislating from the bench, at what point and what is the mechanism to hold them in check? Well, whose job is it? Well, it has been made reference to here. We take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. It is our job, my friends, as legislators, and it is the job of the President, who also seeks to uphold the Constitution.

Now, there is one other thing that has been stated that some staffers probably should be let go, because they have not done their homework. Because if we take a look in the 107th Congress alone, we can take a look and see that the expedite, the construction of the World War II memorial has article III, section 2, the American Service Members Protection Act. Article III, section 2 language, Aviation Security Act. This is all 107th Congress alone. PATRIOT Act, article III, section 2 language. Intelligence Authorization Act, article III, section 2. Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, and also the Department of Justice Authorization Act, that is not to mention a particular elected representative from South Dakota who said no court can have anything to say about his clearing the undergrowth from his forest.

The question before us is a question of whether or not a redefinition of marriage is going to be imposed on all of our States by a few activist judges. Believe me, the answer should be no.

Mr. Chairman, there have been charges over the last number of months, even the last year or two, of various kickbacks and mismanagement of different businesses and different kinds of things that are going on that I have heard from the Democrat Party, but it is interesting that there has been a stony silence when it comes to the biggest scam which is now emerging, the biggest scam in many, many years. It involves not only kickbacks and bribery but it involves even murdering various individuals. I am talking about the new evidence that is emerging on the Oil-for-Food program.

As the Members are perhaps aware, the Oil-for-Food program was a very large program administered by the United Nations. Its purpose was to try to provide humanitarian aid for the Iraqi people and so Saddam was allowed to sell some oil and the oil was supposed to be translated into food which was supposed to get back to his people. What is now emerging and has been emerging for some time is that the United Nations staff that have been administering this program is guilty of gross incompetence, mismanagement and probably complicit with the Iraqi regime in perpetuating the biggest scandal in United Nations history.

It was the largest U.N.-administered program anywhere in the world, that collected a 2.2 percent commission on every barrel of oil sold, and those dollars were put into the Banque Nationale de Paris. According to a February, 2004, article in the New York Times, it says that that money was ``an open bazaar of payoffs, favoritism and kickbacks.''

Why have we not heard more complaint about this? Why have we not heard complaint that the U.N. is trying to bottle up this information and not allow anybody to check into where this money was going? Particularly why is it that the Democrat Party would want us to turn Iraq over to the United Nations, the very people that are in the middle of perpetuating this scam? I do not understand that.

The emerging evidence suggests that corrupt politicians and businesses throughout the world benefited from this Oil-for-Food program and they kept the Iraqi dictator in power. Those who benefited from the corruption have been listed, some of them prominent United Nations officials, including the son of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The list includes no fewer than 46 Russians and 11 French names. The close connection between French and Russian politicians and the Iraqi dictator suggests at least one reason why these governments worked so hard to undermine American efforts to enforce the U.N. resolutions and ultimately remove Saddam from power. In fact, what we find is that documents that were discovered in the wreckage of the Iraqi foreign ministry reveal that the French were sharing the contents of confidential meetings and diplomatic traffic from Washington. Details of talks between French President Chirac and President Bush were also reportedly passed on to the Iraqi foreign ministry by French diplomats in Baghdad.

Yet I cannot understand, why would the Democrats criticize us for not obtaining support from the Russians and the French? The Russians and the French were skimming billions of dollars in a huge scam, and there was absolutely no financial reason for them to want to enforce the United Nations sanctions or to join America in messing up their cozy little deal.

I believe the United States should push for an exhaustive and independent investigation of the Oil-for-Food Program. I think Congress should consider linking our continued funding of the United Nations to long overdue reform and the prosecution of the U.N. officials who were taking part in this program.

In January of 2004 in the State of the Union address, President Bush asserted that America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people. I am glad that he did not need a permission slip, because if we were waiting for the United Nations and for France and for Russia, we would still be waiting. The participation by undermining U.S. efforts in the war on terror is dramatic. Those who, like John Kerry, would seek a permission slip from the U.N. need first to answer the question why the American people should trust their security to an institution whose largest humanitarian program benefited anti-American businesses and political elites, rather than the Iraqi people, a U.N. run by leaders who are part of the biggest scandal in United Nations history.

This needs to be discussed, and we need some answers before we continue to put American dollars into funding a United Nations who was working completely against the interests of the Iraqi people and the interests of freedom around the world.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

About a year or so ago we passed the $15 billion AIDS package, and we did so because we believed in the principles of prevention coupled with treatment.

Now, the amendment that I am offering here today is to make a crystal-clear understanding that the intention of the United States Congress and the American people is in regard to the distribution of this money.

The amendment simply codifies existing law by ensuring that no taxpayer funds designated for this bill, which has to do with tuberculosis, malaria, as well as AIDS, may be used to promote or advocate the legalization of prostitution or sex trafficking, and that no funds may be given to any group or organization that does not have a policy that is explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.

We have received word that there are groups who actively promote prostitution on their Web site, that they have received U.S. tax dollars in the past, and that is why this language is important and why it must be enforced.

If we subsidize any organization, we unavoidably enrich and empower all of the activities of that particular organization, and clearly it is not in the interest of our foreign policy to enrich or empower organizations that refuse to denounce prostitution and sex trafficking.

Now, I probably should make this point very clear that, first of all, my amendment applies only to the $15 billion of AIDS money, and also, that this amendment in no way prevents the distribution of condoms or medications to prostitutes or women sold into the sex trade. It simply mandates that the organization distributing these items must have a statement opposing prostitution and sex trafficking. In fact, in paragraph (e) of the law, it says, ``Nothing in the preceding sentence shall be construed to preclude the provision to individuals of,'' and it goes on to the different types of medical care.

Mr. Chairman, when the United States sends tax dollars to treat and prevent AIDS in Africa, we are telling women that we are interested in their well-being, and we must never confuse that message by financially supporting organizations that actually promote prostitution and sex trafficking.

Now, this may be a little bit theoretical; sometimes we deal with statistics in this Chamber. But in my own experience, traveling to India, to Mumbai, we had a tour of the red light district, and we saw the people that were victims of the sex traffic trade. In fact, we saw their children, about two dozen of them. And one of the things that we were told is that when those children come, first of all, to this house where they can be finally treated decently, and they are told that they have a bed, when it comes nighttime, they crawl underneath the bed. They crawl under the bed because that is where their mother trained them to stay while she was making her living in the evenings.

So we do not want to have any way that any of our policies could be construed with United States money for in any way endorsing or supporting any organization that is not explicitly willing to denounce the trafficking and the misuse of women and children in the sex trade.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Akin

Amendment No. 20: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Madam Speaker, I rise, as my colleagues before me, to recognize this great President, Ronald Reagan. He was a visionary leader who challenged the entire political order of his day. He had the courage to call evil evil; the Soviet empire the evil empire. For that, and for his conviction that freedom would prevail, he was bitterly criticized by his detractors.

Along the same lines, he pioneered a concept of economics that said if we have lower taxes, that it would energize the economy and ultimately that the government would raise more revenue. That was also bitterly criticized. It was called Reaganomics, and yet it worked, and it has worked again to bring us out of the last recession, the same principles.

He believed in the concept of defending America. It was the idea of a missile defense. They called it Star Wars, his detractors, and yet we are building those very things.

He was a man who challenged the political order of his day and redefined an entire political movement and advanced the cause of freedom around the entire world, and for that we all need to say to God, thank you for this great President.

Mr. Chairman, once again, we come to the floor of this body to debate the issue of abortion in overseas military hospitals, and once again, we must do honor to the consciences of military caregivers and to the taxpayers who fund these facilities. Young men and women entering the medical divisions of the armed services are dedicated to protecting life. To ask them to take the lives of unborn children is simply wrong.

In fact, when the Clinton administration overturned the DOD policy against abortion in military facilities between 1993 and 1996, military physicians refused to perform or assist in elective abortions, thus forcing the administration to spend additional tax dollars on recruiting and hiring civilians who were willing to do the abortions.

In a country where 56 percent of Americans oppose abortion and where military physicians have refused to do elective abortions, it is unconscionable for our government to condone abortion by turning military hospitals into abortion clinics.

The language before us today has been debated and rejected year after year since 1996. I urge my colleagues again to defeat the Davis amendment.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to join my colleagues today and to add my support for House Concurrent Resolution 378 calling for the immediate and unconditional release of father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly.

Father Ly has peacefully campaigned for more than 30 years for religious freedom in his country, and he has called on the officials of that nation of Vietnam to allow churches to appoint their own leadership and to stop listing people's religious affiliation on their I.D. card, and to return property that was confiscated from the churches to those particular denominations and faiths.

Now, recently, Father Ly, as we have heard, has been sentenced to 15 years of solitary confinement, a very serious sentence, for merely advocating people having the right for free religious expression. That sentence has been mitigated by 5 years, still a 10-year sentence. In the brief time that he had to speak to his own family, he made the following statement: ``My duty and my conscience required me to fight for the freedom of our church. If I had realized those terrifying situations for our church and had not done anything, I would have been guilty before God. Now I think I have accomplished my duty, I do not feel sorry for myself.''

Father Ly, though he lives on the other side of the world, is in a sense a brother of each of ours. This is a personal affront that the Government of Vietnam has stood against those people who have the courage to allow people to express their own personal consciences.

It is particularly appropriate in this Chamber and at this time for us to recall the words of Madison on the subject of property. When property was discussed by our founders, they did not think so much of a piece of land or even of possession, but they thought of the property first and foremost and closest to the heart of all true lovers of freedom: It was the property of our own convictions, the property of our own soul, the property to be able to express our opinion and our devotion to whichever God it is that we would worship. And it is this fundamental, fundamental, heartfelt core of American belief which binds us to freedom-fighters all over the world and which calls us to strong condemnation of the Government of Vietnam, that they would trample people's right to worship and freedom under their feet with total disregard, and would lock a champion of freedom like this away for 10 years, away from his family, and harassing his family.

So I strongly add my support to the gentleman and his resolution, H. Con. Res. 378.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the substitute offered by the gentleman from New York. I have heard the term ``bipartisan'' and ``bipartisan solution'' now for about half an hour, and it seems to be a synonym for tax increases. That is exactly what we are talking about here.

Last week, Democrats claimed that the AMT needed to be fixed so that married couples could fully benefit from the repeal of this marriage penalty. Well, given the substitute, apparently what they really meant was that only certain married people and only for a period of 1 year.

Adding insult to injury, the Democrat substitute would also permanently raise taxes on manufacturers and other job-creating parts of our economy. I cannot speak for other States, but I can assure my colleagues that the last thing that manufacturers in the State of Missouri want is to have their already slim profits taxed even further. I really do not understand the logic of wanting to go for a big tax increase on the very sector that is creating jobs in our economy. It seems to me that in the last couple of years, we have finally pulled out of a recession because of the tax cuts, and now, we want to tax companies and they are the ones that make the jobs. It does not make any sense at all.

Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve better than another Democrat tax increase. We are here today because in 1993, when President Clinton and the Democrats passed the largest, one of the largest tax increases in history, they did so without indexing those taxes for inflation. As a result, more and more middle income Americans are now hit with a tax that was originally enacted to try to ensure that only the wealthiest among us should pay taxes.

Now, this so-called the wealthiest 1 percent is actually paying 37 percent of the total personal income taxes. One percent is paying 37 percent of the total personal income taxes in this country. I am just not seeing the logic of the fact that we have to have another tax increase.

Today, 3 million hard-working American families are hit with the AMT, a tax that the Congress never intended them to pay. If we do not act today, by 2005, 11 million American families will be burdened with the

Mr. Speaker, just as an introduction, it seems to me that, to a certain degree, the other party doeth protest too much.

The first thing I have been hearing about is complaints about intelligence information. Yet it was the other party, the Democrat Party, that under the Church Commission dismantled our human intelligence and has consistently done that. Over the 8 years Clinton was in office, they voted to cut the human intelligence budget 30 percent and now want to complain about the fact that our intelligence information is not that good.

This is also a party that cut the defense budget close to half and wonders why there is not some equipment sometimes. They cannot have it both ways.

But I would like to focus, rather, about what was and what is now. What was, we saw. We saw the late-night knock of the secret police. We saw the torture chambers when I was in Iraq that used to exist. We saw the women that had been raped as a form of political coercion. We saw women that were not educated.

Those things have changed. Because what is now is a society that is moving into a new century, a place where women can be educated, where no longer torture and murder and amputation are used as a tool to intimidate, and where we saw on the streets of Iraq people starting to emerge into a free civilization. There are all kinds of new businesses being formed.

These are words from a brave Iraqi Parliamentarian, probably risking his life, talking about the new constitution. Some, he says, may say that the Bill of Rights is copied from the West. My answer: these rights and values are not exclusively the property of the West. They are universal and should be respected and implemented everywhere. We have put up a high standard so that the people of the future may always try to reach.

I think that is a statement of our success. Americans have always succeeded when we invest in those tremendously important principles of our own founding, the belief that people are valuable. And we continue to attest to that by our presence in Iraq, by our brave soldiers there. They believe people are important, as opposed to the terrorists that say they are mere pawns.

Mr. Speaker, on 28 January 1968, the U.S.S. Pueblo, under the command of Cmdr. Lloyd ``Pete'' Bucher was attacked by four North Korean torpedo boats while in international waters. The attack resulted in the death of one Navy sailor and the capture of Cmdr. Bucher and his crew.

Held in concrete cells, the Pueblo crew was starved and tortured for 11 months. Fed mostly turnips, many of the malnourished crewmembers began to lose their sight. They were repeatedly beaten and burned on steam radiators.

By all accounts Cmdr. Bucher bore the brunt of the North Korean's wrath. Crewman James Kell explained it this way: ``We were all beaten, we all were tortured. But [Bucher] had it double, triple, quadruple what we got.''

Stu Russell, another crewman, echoes Kell's praise of Cmdr. Bucher: ``The man was a giant. No matter who did what, he was always punished. I simply don't know where he got the strength and courage to go through what he did.''

In January 2004, Cmdr. Lloyd ``Pete'' Bucher passed away and was subsequently buried with honors at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma, San Diego, California. He died an American hero.

Today, joined by 15 bi-partisan colleagues, I introduce this Resolution to honor Cmdr. Lloyd ``Pete'' Bucher and the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo who served our country, and suffered while doing so. They sacrificed that each of us may enjoy the liberty for which so many others have given the ultimate sacrifice.

Mr. Speaker, the topic that I would like to take a look at this evening is the passing of a very important piece of legislation which is scheduled for this week, and that is the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

But I would like to approach this standing back just a minute from a piece of legislation and try to put what we are trying to accomplish this week into context, in fact, into the American context. So I would challenge those, particularly those who are Americans, to answer a question, a very basic question, and that is let us say that someone from another country, and there were a television camera running, were to ask how would they define in a condensed sentence the uniqueness or the essence of what America is. What is it that has made America unique? What has created a Nation that people have come from all over the world to immigrate here? What has created a Nation where we have to have border guards to try to keep people out whereas other nations put minefields and machine gun nests to try to keep people in?

What is it that made America unique, and how would you say that in one simple sentence?

I suppose one of the rules that people who have been involved in politics for some period of time know is that you are not supposed to ask a question unless you have an answer to the same question. So if I were asked to try to summarize what America is about, I would go to our birthday document, to the document that separated America into an independent and unique Nation, and that is the Declaration of Independence, our birthday document.

In that document you find a long and somewhat complicated sentence, but a very important sentence in terms of defining who we are and what has made us so unique. It is the sentence that says, ``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, the sentence does not end with ``pursuit of happiness.'' It goes on to say that governments are instituted among men for the particular purpose of securing those rights, that is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Let us say we take this long sentence, and, as a former engineer myself, we put it into a formula. The formula is pretty straightforward. It has three parts. The first thing is there is a God; the second thing is God grants to mankind, to all people, and in particular our Founders were talking about Americans, certain unalienable rights; and chief among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And so it was based on this document, this simple three-point statement in a sense, that our forefathers declared this a free and independent Nation, and it is by this formula that we believe that all men everywhere are granted with certain unalienable rights, which has to a large degree motivated much of our behavior and defined America. It has also created in America, although it was there for the 170 years before, a culture of respect for life.

Now, how then does the piece of legislation that we are looking at connect to this culture of life in America? I think it is easy when you are discussing legislation to, first of all, talk about that there is some problem, and then you have a bill which is designed to solve the particular problem. So in order to help define the problem that we have in America legislatively, I have a copy here now of a testimony that was given by Tracy Marciniak before a committee, and I would like to read part of her testimony to help define what is going on and the need, the tremendous and important need, that we pass the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

``I carried Zachariah in my womb for almost 9 full months. He was killed in my womb only 5 days from his delivery date. The first time I ever held him in my arms he was already dead.''

The letter goes on. She is pointing to a photograph of her with this child in her arms.

``There is no way that I can really tell you about the pain I feel when I visit my son's gravesite in Milwaukee, and at other times, thinking of all that we missed together. But that pain was greater because the man who killed Zachariah got away with murder. Please don't tell me that my son was not a real victim of a real crime. We were both victims, but only I survived.

``Zachariah's delivery date was to be February 13, 1992, but on the night of February 8, my own husband brutally attacked me at my home in Milwaukee. He held me against a couch by my hair. He knew that I very much wanted my son. He punched me very hard twice in the abdomen. Then he refused to call for help, and prevented me from calling.

``About after 15 minutes of my screaming in pain that I needed help, he finally went to a bar and from there called for help. I and Zachariah were rushed by ambulance to the hospital, where Zachariah was delivered by

emergency cesarean section. My son was dead. The physician said that he had bled to death inside me because of blunt force trauma.

``My own injuries were life-threatening. I nearly died. I spent 3 weeks in the hospital.

``During the time I was struggling to survive, the legal authorities came and they spoke to my sister. They told her something that she found incredible. They told her that in the eyes of Wisconsin law, nobody had died on the night of February 8th. Later, this information was passed on to me. I was told that in the eyes of the law, no murder had occurred. I was devastated.

``My life already seemed destroyed by the loss of my son, but there was so much additional pain because the law was blind to what had really happened. The law which I had been raised to believe was based on justice was telling me that Zachariah had not really been murdered.

``It took over 3 years for this case to go to trial. The State prosecuted my attacker for first degree reckless injury and for false imprisonment, and he was convicted of those counts. They also prosecuted him under a 1955 abortion law, but they failed to win a conviction on the abortion count because that law required that they prove a specific intent to destroy the life of my unborn child. I do not fault the State authorities or the jurors. They simply did not have the legal right or tool for this type of case. The law simply failed to recognize that anybody who looks at the photo should be able to see that Zachariah was robbed of his life.''

That, my friends, is the problem with our laws that we are attempting to fix, that we are attempting to remedy here, with the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. What the act does is it recognizes the fact that when there is a crime of this nature, it recognizes both people who were victims to that particular crime.

Now, there is talk that this law is unnecessary. There are some people who say, no, we do not really need to recognize the second person that is involved. But I would suggest that if one were to talk to the people who have lost their child, women who have been violently attacked in this way, and particularly those who have been attacked in this way close to the time when they are about to deliver, that they would suggest otherwise, that there are indeed two victims. When you talk to the grandparents, they would suggest that there are two victims.

I am 56 years old. I recently, just a matter of a month or so ago, received some very exciting news. I have six children. One of them just this last summer got married. In fact, he got married to a young lady who was working in my congressional office. They have gone off, he is in the Marines, and you can imagine what the news was. We heard that she was expecting her first child, which meant that I was expecting to be, for the first time in my life, a grandfather.

I would suggest that if someone were to attack her and to end the life that is inside her, that it would be a very difficult thing to try to convince me that there was not a person involved, that I did not need to be concerned about the fact that, oh, maybe you are a grandfather, or something like that. I think most of us see that in the most common-sense way.

So that is what is involved with this piece of legislation, to be able to recognize that when a crime, a violent crime, is committed against an innocent, pregnant woman, that there are two victims involved.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to one of my colleagues for whom I have a great deal of respect, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his pointed and well-taken comments.

It is now my honor to be able to yield the floor to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon), a doctor, and my esteemed colleague and good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. It is an honor to work with him and serve with him. I appreciate his leadership on this and many other issues.

It is now my honor to yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks), who it is just an honor to serve with and someone who, though he has been here just merely a small number of months, considering how long some Congressmen have been here, one who has immediately been respected for his thoughtfulness and his articulate understanding of some of these questions. So I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his appropriate comments and a challenge to all of us to recognize something that has been woven throughout America's past and her history over the years, a respect in the most basic sense, a respect for human life.

On this question about what does a mother feel when she is attacked and her child is killed, we have a letter from Laci Peterson's mother that I would share with my colleagues now, and it starts:

``I am writing to thank you for your ongoing efforts to pass `Laci and Conner's Law,' the Unborn Victims of Violence Act,'' giving a bill number, ``and to encourage you to redouble those efforts.''

``On May 5, I and the other members of the family of Laci and Conner wrote to urge that this bill be passed as a tribute to Laci and Conner, and to allow true justice to be done in the future when such horrible crimes occur within the jurisdiction of Federal criminal law or military criminal law. I want you to know that I appreciate your efforts, all the more so because of some of the unfair attacks and criticisms to which you have been subjected in recent weeks by those who oppose the bill for misguided ideological reasons.

``I know that you have been working for years for this legislation, but I have only become aware of your efforts because of our recent tragic circumstances. I have been astonished and somewhat offended to see, in the news media, recent statements by some critics who say that those who have been working for years on this legislation are inappropriately `exploiting' the public interest in the murder of Laci and Conner. I assure you that we do not see it that way. On the contrary, we believe that our case does provide a powerful illustration of why this type of law is absolutely necessary, and we urge you to continue to point to that connection. I intend to do the same, for as long as necessary to achieve the needed reform in the law.

``When a criminal attacks a woman who carries a child, he claims two victims. I lost a daughter, but I also lost a grandson. Fortunately, California law allows a double homicide charge in such a case, but if Laci and Conner had been killed in a Federal jurisdiction, or during commission of a Federal crime of violence, Conner's death would not be recognized or charged. Now that so many people are becoming aware of this defect in Federal law, I hope that the Congress will move swiftly to approve the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. I was heartened to read the White House statement of April 25, stating, `The President does believe that when an unborn child is injured or killed during the commission of a crime of violence, the law should recognize what most people immediately recognize, and that is that such a crime has two victims.'

``Over the last several weeks I have heard the arguments of opponents of Laci and Conner's law, but they seem to me to miss the point. In the first place, they should stop trying to turn this into the abortion issue. California's unborn victim law has been on the books since 1970, and it does not affect the availability of legal abortion, nor have any of the similar laws in effect in more than half the States. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act explicitly says that it does not apply to abortion, or to any acts of the mother herself.

``Having said that, I have no difficulty understanding that any legislator or group opposed to abortion logically would also support this bill to protect the lives of unborn children like Conner from violent criminal actions, and I welcome their support.''

But she goes on to say, ``What I find difficult to understand is why groups and legislators who champion the prochoice cause are blind to the fact that these two-victim crimes are the ultimate violation of choice.

``I have looked very carefully at the `substitute' legislation proposed by the opponents of Laci and Conner's law, which they call `The Motherhood Protection Act,' proposed in the House of Representatives,'' and, ``This proposal would provide that if the victim of a Federal crime happens to be a pregnant woman, and the crime somehow disrupts her pregnancy, a harsher sentence would be assessed than otherwise. But the Lofgren proposal would enshrine in law the offensive concept that such crimes have only a single victim, the pregnant woman. This would be a step in the wrong direction.

``I hope that every legislator will clearly understand that adoption of such a single-victim amendment would be a painful blow to those, like me, who are left alive after a two-victim crime, because the Congress would be saying that Conner and other innocent unborn victims like him are not really victims--indeed, that they never really existed at all. But our grandson did live. He had a name, he was loved, and his life was violently taken from him before he ever saw the sun.

``The application of a single-victim law,'' such as this particular amendment, ``would be even more offensive in the many cases that involved mothers who themselves survive criminal attacks, but who lose their babies in those crimes. I don't understand how any legislator can vote to force prosecutors to tell such a grieving mother

that she didn't really lose a baby, when she knows in the depths of her soul that she did. A legislator who votes for the single-victim amendment, however well motivated, votes to add injury to injury.''

I would, Mr. Speaker, now like to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy), my colleague and respected Member of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. We appreciate his perspective and the challenge to each of us that we need to be about the business that is the fundamental business of our government, and that is to protect. To protect that fundamental right to life, which is so much the heartbeat and the central theme of our country from our very beginning, from our birth day.

I would make reference now just briefly to some polling data which may be of interest to some of my colleagues. Here is a poll that was taken, and I will read it specifically: ``If a violent physical attack on a pregnant woman leads to the death of her unborn child, do you think prosecutors should be able to charge the attacker with killing the fetus?'' The response to this was 79 percent of the American voters who were asked this question, 79 percent said, yes, that we should. The polling data indicates that there is a strong and simple understanding of the fact that such a violent attack as this is really an attack on two individuals.

We have, of course, voted this bill in the House in the past. In the 107th Congress, my first Congress, it was passed by 252 to only 172. It was passed in the previous Congress, the 106th Congress, by 254 to 172. So we have a record of having passed this before. I believe that it is time for us to get on with our business and move ahead with this bill and continue in our tradition of a deep-seated respect for life in America.

Now, when I started my comments not so long ago, I asked if we were to define America in one sentence, if we had to get the essence, the core, of what makes us who we are and we had to try to simplify that and put it into something that would be understood to someone from a foreign country that asked, what is the secret, why is America different, I believe the answer to that question is found in our birthday document, the Declaration of Independence, which is that great sentence, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.''

That document goes on to say that it is the job of government to protect those basic rights. And so if we as Members of the Government of the United States fail to protect that basic right to life, that God-given unalienable right to life, if we fail to take this action, then we fail in our most fundamental purpose as a Nation. We, in fact, are almost turning our back on the organizing principle, our birthday document, and everything that Americans have held dear.

Now, this respect for life was not just reflected in one document years ago, but it has been part of our culture for years. Our founders bled and died and fought a great war for our independence to defend this basic principle. We have seen throughout our history challenges in the courts which have threatened the essence of personhood. There was, of course, the Supreme Court decision where the Supreme Court decided to stop looking at the Constitution and just started to get into the legislative business in Dred Scott, resulting in, or is at least partly responsible for, the great scourge of the Civil War, where we said that people really were not going to acknowledge this personhood.

We have seen this culture carried even forward to our own day. I think some of the most vivid imagery that perhaps many of us can recall came on September 11. It was not a matter of people saying words; it was the way that they lived their lives before everybody watching that showed this respect

that America has for life, when we saw the big, strong police and the firefighters taking people that were in wheelchairs that were hurt or helpless, risking their lives to try to protect the lives of fellow Americans. This was not something that was orchestrated. This was something that we just did. It was an outpouring of the very heart of America.

Subsequently, as we started to go after those people who did not have the respect for life that we have in our culture developed through the years, these terrorists who make it their job of killing people, of taking life, how did we proceed? Did we do the very safest and simplest thing for us, which would have been to unleash a whole lot of nuclear devices on countries that were targets? Of course we did not. We took extra pains to make sure that we tried to minimize collateral damage. We tried to be very, very careful that nobody's life was taken except for people who were immediately responsible or culpable for these acts of terrorism. That has been done at a great risk to many of our own airmen and our own soldiers and all who are involved and even now defending us overseas as we discuss these important questions.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I would call my colleagues back to the things that America has always stood for; that our young men and women have sometimes come home underneath a flag defending this very basic concept, a concept that is bigger than America, a concept that is being taken by America to the entire world, the concept that there is a God, and that every single person in this world is an heir to these unalienable rights, particularly this right to life.

So I close with this appeal that we must recognize this right to life in this situation where a little child is beaten to death. They must be recognized by law, and I urge my colleagues to pass the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart), my respected colleague and the coauthor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, December 8, 2003, the General Assembly of the United Nations, sitting in an emergency special session, adopted Resolution ES 10/14, requesting the International Court of Justice to render an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's security fence.

The placing of this issue before the ICJ as the result of a political campaign within the U.N. General Assembly is a highly unsatisfactory means of dealing with a profoundly complex and contentious issue. If successful, this initiative portends an increasingly political and divisive use of the ICJ.

There is an increasing concern by many countries that the use of the ICJ to obtain an advisory opinion will undermine the stature of the court as well as the role of international law. It is also important that the ICJ continue to abide by the principle of not addressing such contentious issues without the consent of all parties involved. To do otherwise could set a precedent that could serve to weaken the stature of the U.N. by encouraging a new level of politically oriented activity.

This requested abuse of the ICJ would raise the threshold of politically oriented activity. It is important to note that this controversial initiative has not garnered the support of even a majority of U.N. members. Only 90 states, none of them democracies, voted in favor of the resolution.

Israel is a small democratic nation with myriad adversaries bent on its destruction. The undeniable truth remains that Israel, as with any other nation, has the right and responsibility to protect the lives of its innocent civilians from brutal terrorist attacks. Consequently, the question of the preservation of due process with the General Assembly and the preservation of the integrity of the ICJ is essential.

Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, the 29th of October, I was involved in a briefing with the Central Intelligence Agency. As a consequence, I was unavoidably detained and could not cast a vote for H. Res. 417. Had I been present at the time of the vote, I would have voted in the affirmative.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to do something just a little different

now and step back just a small amount from our debate. Sometimes it is good to step back and see the forest.

And so what I would like to do would be to ask a question of those of you who are paying attention to this rather grave moment in the history of our Nation; and that is a very simple question. What is it that has made America, America? What was it that caused people from every nation and every tribe and all over the globe to come to this great land and live in a land where there is prosperity and freedom? I understand there are the detractors, but all of the paths across our borders that are being beaten by immigrants tell the story that there is something special about America.

What is that special thing? If somebody put a camera in front of you and said, what is it that makes America a special place? How would you summarize in one sentence the essence, the formula that is America?

If it were me, I would look back to the document of our birthday, to that great second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, a long sentence. It says, ``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.''

The sentence goes on from there and says that the purpose of government is to protect those God-given rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That means that there is a very simple formula that is the heart of America: There is a God, He grants us unalienable rights, and the job of government is to protect those rights.

If the government does not protect those basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, gentlemen, we have failed in the basic function of why we were here in the first place. We might as well jump on our airplanes and go home and stick our heads in the sand, because that is the purpose of why we are here.

There are some people today who would say, I don't like the formula, I don't agree with that, I don't think there is a God that gives unalienable rights. There were people in those days, we called them Tories, who felt that way as well. But they did not win.

America was built on that basic set of ideas. As we have gone along in time, that set of ideas has proven the test of time and we have been blessed with freedom and prosperity.

But there have been those, those days which I think of as pages in our history that we are not as proud of. There are some gray days in our history. One was in some of our relations with our own brothers, the Indians. There was a Trail of Tears of the Cherokee people that was a gray page in our history.

In the mid-1800s, there was an even grayer page as our Nation grappled and dealt with the terrible scourge of slavery in this land. At that time, the first President of my political party, the Republicans, took charge and under his administration saw fit to try to get rid of those dark pages in America's history.

And then we moved forward to the time when I was born, and unfortunately during the time that I have been alive, the blackest page yet in American history was opened in the process of abortion, where we denied the most basic tenet of what makes America, the right for people to be alive, because if you are not alive, it does not do any good to have freedom of speech or freedom to own property or any other right if you are dead. And of these practices of abortion, the worst, the most obviously evil, is this practice of partial-birth abortion.

As an ironic history, as a matter of fact, some pro-lifers brought it to the attention of the media and the media said, Oh, that couldn't possibly happen. They checked with the pro-abortion people. Oh, that doesn't happen. Then the media found out that they had been lied to.

That is the only thing that seems to make the media really mad is when they get lied to. So they started to let people know what this practice of partial-birth abortion is. I did not like biology very well, and the pictures that I see of it I can hardly stand.

Consider that there is a child that has lived 9 months, he is instants away from taking his first breath of fresh air, of freedom and we are going to poke a hole in the back of his skull and suck out his brains. It makes me sick. It made a lot of other Americans sick as well.

And so it is now that we come to this momentous time, tomorrow, when there is a possibility that we can close again a dark page of America's past. We can close the page on the nightmare of partial-birth abortion. And we can once again reaffirm those truths that we stand by, that there are basic rights given to all mankind everywhere by our God and that the most basic right of any government is to protect the life, that precious life made in the image of our Creator, the life of our little children.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 1078.