Chris Smith: “I thank my good friend for yielding. Madam Speaker, last week Pope Francis admonished a joint session of Congress to…”

“I thank my good friend for yielding. Madam Speaker, last week Pope Francis admonished a joint session of Congress to follow the Golden Rule--to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Pope also said the Golden Rule compels us to protect and defend human life at every stage of development--and, of course, that includes the unborn. It is wrong to remain silent, he said, or to look the other way when individuals are put at risk. At the White House welcoming ceremony earlier in the day, President Obama spoke of protecting the least of these, taken from Matthew's Gospel, the 25th chapter. When President Obama says protect the least of these, he excludes millions of unborn children. Every day Planned Parenthood dismembers or chemically poisons to death approximately 900 unborn babies, the least of these, and hurts many women in the process. Subsidized by half a billion dollars annually, Planned Parenthood kills a baby every 2 minutes and has terminated the lives of over 7 million infants since 1973, a staggering loss of children's lives that equates to twice the number of every man, woman and child living in the State of Connecticut. So I rise in strong support of H.R. 3495, the Women's Health and Public Safety Act, authored by our distinguished colleague, Sean Duffy, to give States the authority to defund Planned Parenthood. States, indeed, Madam Speaker, should have the freedom to choose who they subsidize and why.…”