Sam Brownback: “Today is a sad day. We had a wonderful inauguration a couple of days ago, phenomenal crowd, a great celebration, and a…”

“Today is a sad day. We had a wonderful inauguration a couple of days ago, phenomenal crowd, a great celebration, and a peaceful transfer of power took place. It was amazing. I was there on the front steps of the Capitol watching it, participating in it, excited about the first African-American President of the United States; an amazing thing to take place within one generation of Martin Luther King's marches and what he did in this country. My State has been a big part of all of those things and what has taken place. Today is a sad day, though. Today, 36 years ago, the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade banned all impediments to having an abortion in the United States and said abortion is a constitutional right that the individual carries in the United States and that it cannot be infringed upon, cannot be limited. It did later limit some of that and gave a few places where the State could act to limit--most recently partial-birth abortions, where the Supreme Court has recently ruled that the State can limit partial-birth abortions. And there were a few minor areas in the Roe decision, but overall it made a constitutional right to abortion. That was 36 years ago. The reason I say it is a sad day is there have been roughly--and nobody knows for sure--40 million children who are not here today because of that decision.”