John Conyers: “Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues of the 105th Congress, we assemble again to take up an issue that we have dealt with…”

“Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues of the 105th Congress, we assemble again to take up an issue that we have dealt with in the previous Congress, the President has dealt with by vetoing it, the Congress has dealt with the attempt to override by not being able to override, and so we gather today with the same piece of legislation attempting to do the same thing. Why? Well, it just so happens that notwithstanding my good friend, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady], whose desire and commitment to this subject matter has led the Congress into this situation for two Congresses in a row, we are faced with a constitutional problem. Let us spell it out right at the beginning of this debate, shall we? It is a constitutional problem that we did not invent, and it is embodied in two parts of the Constitution, the 5th amendment and the 14th amendment, in the parts of those amendments that are known as the due process clauses. In the due process clauses, it has been found by the U.S. Supreme Court on more than one occasion that a right of privacy to the woman that has a reproductive choice is grounded in constitutional guarantees.”