“No One is Expendable” -- Part Two of Three

The following are excerpts from a statement of Rep. Chris Smith, delivered October 31, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting. Cong. Smith did so while pointing to video of a ten-week baby kicking in the womb. Smith called on committee members to “recognize that protecting life is at the core of the debate over the Mexico City Policy.”

Mr. Chairman, someday future generations of Americans will look back on us and wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with the capacity to protect and enhance vulnerable human life, could have instead so aggressively promoted death to children by abortion both here and overseas.

They will note that we prided ourselves on our commitment to human rights, while precluding virtually all protection to the most persecuted minority in the world today, unborn children.

Human life begins at the moment of conception. Every second thereafter is simply a stage of development. By day 22 after fertilization the heart is beating and brain waves can be detected at 44 days. By week five tiny hands and feet begin to develop and by week 7 the baby is already kicking and swimming in the womb. Look at the unborn child in the video at 10 weeks, moving, turning, and stretching. We now know that in the second trimester babies have the capacity to feel pain.

Future generations will indeed wonder why we didn’t get it—unborn babies even if they are “unwanted” have dignity, inherent value and infinite worth. And because they are so vulnerable, governments must protect their human rights.

And they will wonder why it took so long for Congress, the President and the courts here in America to stop just one hideous painful method of death, partial-birth abortion. And why dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing a child with powerful suction devices or chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals, failed to elicit so much as a scintilla of empathy, mercy or compassion for the victims.

Abortion is violence against children, Mr. Chairman. It is extreme child abuse. It is cruelty to children.

Abortion treats pregnancy as a sexually transmitted disease, a parasite, a piece of junk to be destroyed. And the whole notion of wantedness and unwantedness turns a child into an object.

I respectfully submit that the term unsafe abortion is the ultimate oxymoron.

All induced abortion, whether legal or illegal, is unsafe for the baby. It is also unsafe for the mother, who is at risk not only of physical injury, but also of long-term psychological damage including severe depression.

All abortion is unsafe—and a violation of human rights.

Now, as in previous years, some Members of Congress want to export the violence of abortion to Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia and Europe by reversing the pro-life Mexico City policy and by providing hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations so ideologically obsessed with abortion that they insist on promoting and performing abortion as a method of family planning rather than accepting U.S. donations.

First announced by the Reagan administration at a 1984 U.N. Population Conference held in Mexico City, hence its name, the current policy simply requires that foreign nongovernmental organizations agree, as a condition of their receipt of Federal assistance for family-planning activities, to neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.

The three exceptions in the Mexico City policy are rape, incest and life of the mother.

Mr. Chairman, today, scores of countries throughout the world are literally under siege in a well-coordinated, exceedingly well-funded campaign to overturn the laws and policies of sovereign nations that protect women and children from the violence of abortion on demand, putting women and children at risk—and now they want us, the American taxpayer—to facilitate, enable and legitimize their deadly activities.

The challenge we must meet is to always at all times affirm, care for and tangibly assist both the mother and the unborn child.

We must increase access to maternal and prenatal care, access to safe blood and better nutrition.

We must expand essential obstetrical services including skilled birth attendants, and improved transportation capabilities for emergency care to significantly reduce maternal mortality and morbidity—including obstetric fistula.
Expanding these measures will reduce deaths and injury to both mothers and children.

No one is expendable.

No one’s life is cheap.

The humane way forward is to devise and implement policies that respect, protect, assist and defend BOTH women and their babies from all threats, including abortion.

Part One
Part Three