Sam Brownback: “I rise to address the alarming decision handed down earlier this week by a District Court in California on partial birth…”

“I rise to address the alarming decision handed down earlier this week by a District Court in California on partial birth abortion. The judge's decision was wrong on many fronts. It is wrong on the medical facts, and it is wrong in its blatant disregard of Congressional findings. Most importantly, the decision is also wrong on the law. This ruling is unconstitutional, as well as violative of fundamental human rights, because it drives a wedge between biological humanity which prenatal human offspring undeniably have, and legal personhood i.e., the right to the equal protection of the law. The repellant notion underlying Roe v. Wade--that there are 'subhuman' members of the human species--conflicts directly with the very purposes of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, which undid the great injustice of treating black Americans as slaves and property instead of as human beings entitled at law to full respect. I realize that the Supreme Court has not yet repudiated this holding of Roe, which it imposed upon the Nation in 1973, but this case decided by one district court in California is clearly going in a direction that contradicts everything we value about the Constitution and the principles under which this Nation and its people operate.”