Phil Gingrey: “I want to just relay to my colleagues an experience, a life-changing experience, if you will. We have twin…”

“I want to just relay to my colleagues an experience, a life-changing experience, if you will. We have twin granddaughters, identical twin granddaughters, born at 26 weeks. They will be soon celebrating their 10th birthday. So we watched them for 80 days in the neonatal intensive care nursery, and the neonatalogist would come by every day and say we are not going to stick their heel again today because it is too painful and we are going to make sure that we only draw blood when it is absolutely necessary. And I, as a physician, having delivered many of these premature, immature male infants, offer anesthesia before a circumcision procedure. It is required as part of an informed consent. So this is what this bill is about. It is informed consent carried to its logical extent, and it is an act of compassion. I commend the gentleman for the bill because this is simply trying to make sure that the informed consent is there. And even the National Abortion Rights League does not oppose this bill, and I commend them for that. I support wholeheartedly the legislation, and I commend Representative Smith for this bill.”