Taken from the Congressional Record, October 30, 1995
Special Order speech by Representative Christopher Smith of new Jersey
Madam Speaker, we are here this week to debate what some might call a simple
medical question. Specifically, whether a certain procedure known as partial birth
abortion should be left alone as good and permissible medicine, or legally banned as
brutality, masquerading as medicine.
This week the 22 year cover-up of abortion methods is over. I applaud Chairman
CANADY for his courage in bringing this very thoughtful legislation to the floor and
for exposing this particular abuse of little kids.
For more than two decades the abortion industry has sanitized abortion methods by
aggressively employing the shrewdest and most benign euphemisms market research
can buy. They have engaged, without question, in cover-up.
Throughout the country there have been proposals at the State legislative level for
informed consent legislation to provide, before the woman submits to abortion, a clear
understanding of the child's humanity. Pictures, anatomically correct, about the child in
utero.
NARAL and the Abortion Rights lobby has opposed each and every one of those efforts
to inform the woman about the humanity of the unborn child and about any possible
deleterious effects that abortion could have on her life. Gov. Bob Casey recently told me
that in Pennsylvania, where informed consent la the law, there has been a 13-percent
drop in abortions, and Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist himself, has said
that if wombs had windows, women would run out of abortion clinics, because they
would see that the child that they carry is a little baby.
Now we find ourselves in the midst of a sea change regarding how abortion is
addressed by this House. This week, in addition to the debates on whether or not the
Federal Government should fund abortions, we will, for the first time, begin to debate
whether or not a particular heinous method of abortion, partial birth abortions, should
continue to be legal in our land.
This is serious business, Madam Speaker. It is therefore especially fitting that this
debate in particular should not be about philosophical abstractions like choice, the
rights of women and privacy, all of them laudable when considered only in the
abstract. This debate, if it is to shed any light on the serious question at hand, if
It is to be honest and thereby worthy of this House, must be about the very behavior,
the methods themselves, and that is why the descriptions of this type of abortion needs
to go forward without being gagged.
Madam Speaker, as the gentleman from Florida [Mr. CANADY] pointed out earlier, Dr.
Martin Haskell, a medical doctor who unashamedly performs these methods of
abortions by the hundreds, unashamedly does this kind of abuse to children, let him
describe it in his own words as he told the National Abortion Federation's risk
management seminar Abortion Federation's risk management seminar a couple of
years ago.
I quote him:
The surgeon introduces a large, grasping forcep through the vaginal and cervical canals
into the corpus of the uterus. Based upon his knowledge of fetal orientation, he moves
the tip of the instrument carefully toward the fetal lower extremities When the
instrument appears on the sonogram screen, the surgeon is able to open and close its
Jaws to firmly and reliably grasp a lower extremity. The surgeon than applies firm
traction to the instrument causing a version of the fetus and pulls the extremity into the
vagina.
Dr. Haskell goes on to say:
The surgeon uses his fingers to deliver the lower extremity, then the torso, then the
shoulders, and then the upper extremities. The skull lodges at the internal cervical os.
Usually there is not enough dilation for it to pass through. The fetus is oriented doraum
or spine up.
The surgeon then takes a bear of blunt. curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand.
He carefully advances the Up, curved down, along the spine and under his middle
finger until he feels it contact at the base of the skull under the tip of his middle finger.
The surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull. Having safely entered the
skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening.
The surgeon removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and
evacuates the skull contents. With the catheter still in place, he applies traction to the
fetus, removing it completely from the patient.
Madam Speaker, that clinical description of child abuse is what is in the table and will
be debated this week. Whether individuals should be permitted to pull a living child
out of her mother's womb and stick a scissors through the back of her head and then
suck her brains out until she is dead is the brunt and the crux of this legislation. Should
that behavior be legal, or should it be criminal is what we must decide this week.
This week, this legislation will, for the first time ever in this debate in this House or in
the Senate, finally say whether or not we will approve or disapprove of legalized
abortion, particularly in this method.
It was mentioned earlier by my good friend, Mr. CANADY, and also by some other
Members during this special order, that one particular nurse saw this and got deathly
sick from what she saw. She saw that living child, the heart beating, the feet kicking,
the
hands grasping and making little fists, and she walked out of there never to go back,
and now she has turned State's evidence to bring a witness to the Congress and to the
American people about partial birth abortions.
It was pointed out earlier that the American Medical Association's legislative council
saw fit to join in supporting this legislation, and shame on the American Medical
Association when that recommendation came forward for not saying yes, we will stand
for children as we have done so historically, going Back to the 1860's and beyond, when
they said that abortion takes the life of a baby. Unfortunately, politics intervened with
its ugly head and unfortunately, they have now become "neutral" on this particular
legislation.
The gentleman from Florida [Mr. CANADY] is a great leader, and he is bringing this
debate to this House, and I hope many people who call themselves pro choice will take
a good, hard look at the reality of what abortion actually is.
Madam Speaker, when you look at the methods of abortion, this is one of many that is a
heinous act. If you look at D&C abortions where the baby is literally dismembered in
utero, not so much different from this method. The suction methods which the other
side likes to talk about with all kinds of euphemisms, suction curettage and all of those
words they we, clinical words, to kill the baby, usually around the 12th week.
Those methods, too, destroy a living growing developing little baby boy or little baby
girl.
This legislation is human rights legislation. I hope this whole House, and I know it is
hoping against hope because some Members are under instructions from the abortion
lobby to oppose it and to speak out against it, but in their heart of hearts, that small still
voice will say, that is a crime. That is child abuse.
We need to speak out loudly and clearly because we have an affirmative obligation to
protect children from that kind of abuse. I applaud the gentleman from Florida [Mr.
CANADY] for his leadership. It is a good bill and deserves the support of every
Member of this House.
Mr. CANADY of Florida. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his comments
tonight. I want to also thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his long-standing
leadership in defense of the unborn. There is no one in the Congress who has fought
harder and more consistently to protect the rights of the unborn than our colleague
from New Jersey, Mr. SMITH. We all owe a debt of gratitude to him for his leadership.
Taken from the Congressional Record November 1, 1995
SUPPORT PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN
(Mr. SMITH of New Jersey asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, why is the pro-abortion movement even more
fiercely opposed to the partial birth abortion bill than other pro-life measures? They
insist that this bill would regulate only a small percentage of abortions, yet they are
outraged that the bill is on the docket today.
I think it is this. Usually when we discuss abortion we talk about everything but
abortion itself. According to the rules of the game the abortion controversy is about
philosophy or religion or economics, about everything but what actually happens in
each and every abortion.
By addressing one particular kind of abortion, this legislation forces us for the first time
to acknowledge the dark, dirty secret of what actually happens. The baby dies. The 23
year cover-up about the brutal methods of abortion, including dismemberment,
injections of chemical poisons and now brainsucking procedures is over. The cover-up
is over. The gruesome spectacle of partial-birth abortions forces us to admit that what
happens is death. It forces us to acknowledge that what dies is a baby, and we see all
too clearly that the death inflicted on that baby is unspeakably cruel.
Taken from the Congressional Record November 1, 1995
(On the rule)
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I think the record should be very clear that in
the past, prior to Roe versus Wade, abortion was illegal and unborn children were
protected In most of the States and it was the doctors that were prosecuted, the
abortionist, the quacks, who were doing those abortions. So the previous speaker's
statement simply is not true.
Mr. Speaker, the vote on this rule bolls down to one simple question. Will our
discussion and our votes today be about the procedure known as partial birth abortion
or will the organized pro-abortion forces succeed again in diverting the debate and
muddying the waters?
The professional abortionists and the paid representatives of the abortion industry
desperately want to avoid a congressional debate on what actually happens in this
procedure or any other method of abortion for that matter. They already know better
than anyone else the gruesome details about every method of abortion. The abortion
lobby also knows that most Members of Congress who generally vote on their side of
the issue, like most Americans, are really not pro abortion in their heart of hearts.
Mr. Speaker. they know that today, if this rule is adopted, the abortion debate will shift
from the abstract to the real. They know that the 23 year cover-up by the multibillion
dollar abortion industry, with the complicity of many in the media, will be over and
history will be made.
For the first time ever we will directly confront the violence of what the abortionist
actually does. For the first time ever we will directly confront the child abuse called
legal abortion and say yes or no. if this rule is adopted Members of Congress who have
sincere differences about abortion will be faced with one important question and only
one: Whether this procedure, which inflicts a death so cruel that it would never be
inflicted on a convicted murderer, so cruel that it would surely be a crime to inflict such
torture on a dog, is too cruel to be inflicted on a child.
Mr. Speaker, the abortion industry knows that it can never win unless it deflects
attention away from itself, away from the abortion procedures and on to something
else. So this industry and its supporters are particularly infuriated when anyone
threatens to describe an abortion procedure in detail. They attack as dangerous, an
extremist, anyone who would describe such a procedure either with words or with
pictures. So they know if this rule is adopted, if we have a fair and honest and
thorough discussion today, not about side issues, but about the partial birth abortion
procedure itself, the abortion debate will forever change.
Americans will see that the real extremists are not the people who insist on calling
attention to the grizzly details of abortion, such as dismemberment of the unborn child,
including injections of high concentrated salt solutions and other kinds of poisons that
chemically burn and then kill the baby, or this particular method, a brain sucking
method of abortion. They will see that the real extremists are those who actually do
these heinous procedures and want to keep it a secret.
The dangerous person is not the one who shows us the pictures or who describes
abortions, the dangerous person, the child abuser, is the one depicted in the picture, the
person holding the scissors at the base of the baby's skull.
Mr. Speaker, Dr. Martin Haskel, one of the leaders in trying to promote this method
who has actually done hundreds of these partial birth abortions, said in a recorded
interview that 80 percent of the partial birth abortions are elective abortions, abortions
on-demand, not life of the mother abortions, which again this bill would allow. Dr.
Haskel describes it this way. These are his words. "The surgeon forces the scissors into
the base of the skull. Having safely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge
the opening. The surgeon then removes those scissors and introduces a suction catheter
into the hole and evacuates the skull contents. That is the brain of an unborn baby.
Evacuates the skull contents." How dehumanizing.
Mr. Speaker, let us have a real debate on this issue today. Abortion methods and the
cover-up that has gone on for so long must end. Abortion is child abuse. This is a
particularly heinous form of that child abuse. Why are so many good people on the
other side and on this side, that I know and respect, defending this kind of abuse
against children?
I urge Members to vote for the Canady bill. Vote for this rule. We need to end this
legalized child abuse. We have to look at life and birth really as an event that happens
to each and every one of us. In this particular bill we are talking about a baby who is
half born. The feet are literally out of the mother's womb. Vote for the Canady
amendment and vote for this rule.
Taken from the Congressional Record November 1
General Debate
Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New
Jersey [Mr. SMITH]
Mr. SMITH Of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, this is a historic day for our Nation. The
cover-up of abortion methods is over.
Today, Congress comes to grips with the specifics of what an abortion actually dose,
and it ain't pretty. From this day forward, we will no longer be able to say we did not
know. We now know and every Member of this Chamber should know, that every
abortion takes the life of a child. Whether it be a partial-birth abortion or D&E abortion,
where the baby is literally dismembered while in utero, or the suction abortions
routinely done, thousands per day, where a high-powered vacuum, 20 to 30 times more
powerful than a vacuum cleaner in one's home, literally dismembers the child. All of
these methods kill the baby. This is all about human rights for children, and it is about
preserving and protecting the right to life of baby girls and baby boys.
Somebody said this is anti-woman. Half of those little infants killed are baby girls. Let
us not ever forget that. Then again, let's also remember what Dr. Haskel himself has
said. I would like to repeat it very briefly. Dr. Haskel said and I quote: "The surgeon
forces the scissors into the base of the skull." This is medical practice? And then a high-
powered suction catheter is introduced, and the baby's brains are sucked out.
