John Conyers: “I just wanted to comment on the gentleman's argument about other States having similar laws, and so why can we not do…”

“I just wanted to comment on the gentleman's argument about other States having similar laws, and so why can we not do the same thing? The reason we have not done the same thing is that many of these State laws are obviously drafted differently. They do not use controversial terms, some of them, as 'unborn child' or 'child in utero.' The second thing is that none of these State laws have been validated or upheld in a Federal court, let alone a Supreme Court decision. They have not been tested. So I do not think that gives us a presumption that we can copy State law. I say to my colleagues, we should be creating Federal law that States may want to pattern themselves after. Then, we might want to take into consideration the experience with State laws that have not been very favorable on this subject. Some of these laws have been used as excuses to justify prosecuting women for their conduct while they are pregnant. A whole host of problems arise this way. In South Carolina, ironically, now they prosecute women whose babies are found to have drugs in their system; the mothers are prosecuted. In another case, the court ordered into custody a pregnant woman who refused medical care because of religious convictions, in an attempt to ensure that the baby be born safely.”