Editor's note. The following are excerpts from the remarks
of Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) presented at the 25th annual March for Life.
The enlightening
national debate over partial-birth abortion has accelerated the process
of exposing the simple truth that abortion is violence against children
and that the abortion movement routinely exploits, injures, and lies to
women.
The 25-year coverup of this national scandal is over. As movements go, the
pro-abortionists have lost credibility. They have been unmasked and shown
to have engaged in a grand deception - - they have lied through their teeth.
Our prayer for Abortion President Bill Clinton and the Abortion Vice President
Al Gore and all those blinded by the abortion industry: learn from Dr. Nathanson
- - have the courage, compassion, and intellectual honesty to get off the
death ship and join the crusade for life. Like the Titanic, the pro-abortionists
are going down. Don't, Mr. President, let your legacy be "Abortion
President."
For the first time in 25 years, Americans are looking beyond the cheap sophistry
and self-serving rhetoric of the abortion industry, and they are connecting
the dots. If it's shocking and inhumane to jam scissors and a vacuum hose
into the head of a partially delivered baby, why is it any less violent,
shocking, and inhumane to dismember the bodies of children with surgical
knives, or to dislodge and destroy babies with hideous suction machines
(20 to 30 times more powerful than a household vacuum cleaner), or to pump
dangerous chemical compounds, including extremely high-concentrated salt
water, into the unborn babies' environment so as to poison the child?
Today we mourn the untimely deaths of more than 36 million babies - - a
holocaust of staggering proportion. Today we remember the 36 million kids
who will never take their first steps or thrill their parents with their
first day of school or play soccer, basketball, or baseball. For every two
young people in America and at this March for Life, a third person is missing
because an entire generation has had no protective law to ensure its safety.
Congress reconvenes next week and I ask your prayers and lobbying to stop
the Clinton Administration and their Republican and Democratic friends in
Congress from giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood
and like-minded groups who seek to topple pro-life laws in foreign countries.
As you know, at home, Planned Parenthood operates the largest chain of abortion
mills and performs or refers for over 230,000 abortions each year - - a
staggering loss of life. Planned Parenthood lobbies and litigates against
even the most modest safeguards like parental consent laws.
Overseas, Planned Parenthood employs the same deceitful tactics they use
here, putting millions of kids' lives at risk in the 100 countries that
currently protect their unborn children.
Please, tell your congressmen and senators to support the Mexico City Policy
on population control funding - - so taxpayers will no longer subsidize
the overseas abortion industry.
Finally, a special word to our young people who march today in record numbers.
Think about running for Congress someday. Despite what you hear, public
service can and certainly should be honorable, ethical, and clean.
You can make the difference.
Right now, the task in the Republican Party is to make safeguarding the
precious lives of unborn children and their mothers a priority....
...Except for an important remnant [of pro-life Democrats] in Congress,
it is pitiful that in 1998 unborn baby girls and boys are simply not of
any importance to the Democratic Party. They are the throw-aways.
To our young, I encourage you to pray, fast, and get involved in politics.
Our nation needs you.