Henry Hyde's Plea to Override President Clinton's Veto of
the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban -- Part Three of Three

Editor’s note. In 1996 Congressman Hyde gave one of his most impassioned and eloquent speeches as he implored his colleagues to override President Clinton’s veto. His remarks are reproduced from the Congressional Record, September 19, 1996.

Mr. Speaker, I beg the indulgence of my colleagues not to ask me to yield because I cannot and will not and I would appreciate their courtesy. I also want to say briefly that those who have charged us with politics, invidious politics, for delaying this debate ought to understand that Americans cannot believe this practice exists and it has taken months to educate the American people and it will take many more months to educate them as to the nature and extent of this horrible practice. That is one reason it has taken so long.

The law exists to protect the weak from the strong. That is why we are here.

Mr. Speaker, in his classic novel Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has his murderous protagonist Raskolnikov complain that "Man can get used to anything, the beast!"

That we are even debating this issue, that we have to argue about the legality of an abortionist plunging a pair of scissors into the back of the tiny neck of a little child whose trunk, arms and legs have already been delivered, and then suctioning out his brains only confirms Dostoyevsky's harsh truth.

We were told in committee by an attending nurse that the little arms and legs stop flailing and suddenly stiffen as the scissors is plunged in. People who say "I feel your pain" are not referring to that little infant.

What kind of people have we become that this procedure is even a matter for debate? Can we not draw the line at torture, and baby torture at that? If we cannot, what has become of us? We are all incensed about ethnic cleansing. What about infant cleansing? There is no argument here about when human life begins. The child who is destroyed is unmistakably alive, unmistakably human and unmistakably brutally destroyed.

The justification for abortion has always been the claim that a woman can do with her own body what she will. If you still believe that this four-fifths delivered little baby is a part of the woman's body, then I am afraid your ignorance is invincible.

I finally figured out why supporters of abortion on demand fight this infanticide ban tooth and claw, because for the first time since Roe v. Wade the focus is on the baby, not the mother, not the woman but the baby, and the harm that abortion inflicts on an unborn child, or in this instance a four-fifths born child. That child whom the advocates of abortion on demand have done everything in their power to make us ignore, to dehumanize, is as much a bearer of human rights as any Member of this House. To deny those rights is more than the betrayal of a powerless individual. It betrays the central promise of America, that there is, in this land, justice for all.

The supporters of abortion on demand have exercised an amazing capacity for self-deception by detaching themselves from any sympathy whatsoever for the unborn child, and in doing so they separate themselves from the instinct for justice that gave birth to this country.

The President [Bill Clinton], reacting angrily to this challenge to his veto, claims not to understand why the morality of those who support a ban on partial-birth abortions is superior to the morality of "compassion" that he insists informed his decision to reject Congress' ban on what [former] Senator [Daniel] Moynihan has said is "too close to infanticide."

Let me explain, Mr. President. There is no moral nor, for that matter, medical justification for this barbaric assault on a partially born infant. Dr. Pamela Smith, director of medical education in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Chicago's Mount Sinai Hospital, testified to that, as have many other doctors. ...

The abortionist who is a principal perpetrator of these atrocities, Dr. Martin Haskell, has conceded that at least 80 percent of the partial-birth abortions he performs are entirely elective; 80 percent are elective. And he admits to over a thousand of these abortions, and that is some years ago.

We are told about some extreme cases of malformed babies as though life is only for the privileged, the planned and the perfect. Dr. James McMahon, the late Dr. James McMahon, listed nine such abortions he performed because the baby had a cleft lip.

Many other physicians who care both about the mother and the unborn child have made it clear this is never a medical necessity, but it is a convenience for the abortionist. It is a convenience for those who choose to abort late in pregnancy when it becomes difficult to dismember the unborn child in the womb.

Well, the President claims he wants to solve a problem by adding a health exception to the partial-birth abortion ban. That is spurious, as anyone who has spent 10 minutes studying the Federal law understands. Health exceptions are so broadly construed by the court, as to make any ban utterly meaningless.

If there is no consistent commitment that has survived the twists and the turns in policy during this administration, it is an unshakable commitment to a legal regime of abortion on demand. Nothing is or will be done to make abortion rare. No legislative or regulatory act will be allowed to impede the most permissive abortion license in the democratic world.

The President would do us all a favor and make a modest contribution to the health of our democratic process if he would simply concede this obvious fact.

In his memoirs Dwight Eisenhower wrote about the loss of 1.2 million lives in World War II, and he said:

"The loss of lives that might have otherwise been creatively lived scars the mind of the civilized world."

Mr. Speaker, our souls have been scarred by one and a half million abortions every year in this country. Our souls have so much scar tissue there is not room for any more.

And say, what do we mean by human dignity if we subject innocent children to brutal execution when they are almost born? We all hope and pray for death with dignity. Tell me what is dignified about a death caused by having a scissors stabbed into your neck so your brains can be sucked out.

We have had long and bitter debates in this House about assault weapons. Those scissors and that suction machine are assault weapons worse than any AK-47. One might miss with an AK-47; the doctor never misses with his assault weapon, I can assure my colleagues.

It is not just the babies that are dying for the lethal sin of being unwanted or being handicapped or malformed. We are dying, and not from the darkness, but from the cold, the coldness of self-brutalization that chills our sensibilities, deadens our conscience and allows us to think of this unspeakable act as an act of compassion.

If my colleagues vote to uphold this veto, if they vote to maintain the legality of a procedure that is revolting even to the most hardened heart, then please do not ever use the word compassion again.

A word about anesthesia. Advocates of partial-birth abortions tried to tell us the baby does not feel pain; the mother's anesthesia is transmitted to the baby. We took testimony from five of the country's top anesthesiologists, and they said it is impossible, that result will take so much anesthesia it would kill the mother.

By upholding this tragic veto, those colleagues join the network of complicity in supporting what is essentially a crime against humanity, for that little, almost born infant struggling to live is a member of the human family, and partial-birth abortion is a lethal assault against the very idea of human rights and destroys, along with a defenseless little baby, the moral foundation of our democracy because democracy is not, after all, a mere process. It assigns fundamental rights and values to each human being, the first of which is the inalienable right to life.

One of the great errors of modern politics is our foolish attempt to separate our private consciences from our public acts, and it cannot be done. At the end of the 20th century, is the crowning achievement of our democracy to treat the weak, the powerless, the unwanted as things? To be disposed of? If so, we have not elevated justice; we have disgraced it.

This is not a debate about sectarian religious doctrine or about policy options. This is a debate about our understanding of human dignity, what does it mean to be human? Our moment in history is marked by a mortal conflict between a culture of death and a culture of life, and today, here and now, we must choose sides.

I am not the least embarrassed to say that I believe one day each of us will be called upon to render an account for what we have done, and maybe more importantly, what we fail to do in our lifetime, and while I believe in a merciful God, I believe in a just God, and I would be terrified at the thought of having to explain at the final judgment why I stood unmoved while Herod's slaughter of the innocents was being reenacted here in my own country.

This debate has been about an unspeakable horror. While the details are graphic and grisly, it has been helpful for all of us to recognize the full brutality of what goes on in America's abortuaries day in and day out, week after week, year after year. We are not talking about abstractions here. We are talking about life and death at their most elemental, and we ought to face the truth of what we oppose or support stripped of all euphemisms, and the queen of all euphemisms is "choice" as though one is choosing vanilla and chocolate instead of a dead baby or a live baby.

Now, we have talked so much about the grotesque; permit me a word about beauty. We all have our own images of the beautiful; the face of a loved one, a dawn, a sunset, the evening star. I believe nothing in this world of wonders is more beautiful than the innocence of a child.

Do my colleagues know what a child is? She is an opportunity for love, and a handicapped child is an even greater opportunity for love.

Mr. Speaker, we risk our souls, we risk our humanity when we trifle with that innocence or demean it or brutalize it. We need more caring and less killing.

Let the innocence of the unborn have the last word in this debate. Let their innocence appeal to what President Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Let our votes prove Raskolnikov is wrong. There is something we will never get used to. Make it clear once again there is justice for all, even for the tiniest, most defenseless in this, our land.

Please send any comments or questions to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part One
Part Two