Dan Coats: “William Wilberforce is a man whom I have, over the years, looked to as a role model and an example of what public…”

“William Wilberforce is a man whom I have, over the years, looked to as a role model and an example of what public service should be and what public servants should be. Wilberforce served as a Member of the British Parliament from 1784 to 1812. After an early career marked by what he described as doing nothing of purpose, Wilberforce then went through a transformational period of self-reflection. He emerged with a deepened faith, greater moral courage, and an unshakeable passion for ending the slave trade. He said: So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition. It took Wilberforce 20 years of blood, sweat, tears, and even death threats, but he succeeded in pushing the House of Commons and the House of Lords to put abolition into law when the Slave Trade Act of 1807 passed. I believe today, just 2 hours from now, we will have a William Wilberforce moment facing the Senate. Through a series of video releases over the past few weeks, the American people have learned about the shocking and barbaric practices Planned Parenthood uses to terminate innocent human lives. In several different videos, senior Planned Parenthood officials openly and candidly discussed the organ harvesting of fetuses.…”