Tom Coburn: “I stand here today, not as a member of one party or another, not as somebody who readily admits that they are pro-life.…”

“I stand here today, not as a member of one party or another, not as somebody who readily admits that they are pro-life. I am. But I stand here today as a doctor. Mr. Speaker, I have spent the last 18 years of my life, including a great deal of the time of the last 2 years while I have been in this Congress, caring for women who deliver babies. I have personally been involved in over 3,000 births that I have attended. I have seen every complication and every anomaly that has been mentioned in this debate on partial-birth abortion. I am not standing here as somebody who is pro-life, I am not standing here as somebody that is a freshman Republican. I stand here today to make known to Members that they can vote against an override for only two reasons on this bill. One is that they are totally misinformed of the true medical facts, or that they are pro-abortion at any stage, for any reason. The facts will bear that out. That is not meant to offend anybody. If somebody feels that way, they should stand up and speak that truth. But this procedure, this procedure is designed to aid and abet the abortionist. There is no truth to the fact that this procedure protects the lives of women. There is no truth to the fact that this procedure preserves fertility. There is no truth to the fact that this procedure in fact is used on complicated, anomalous conceptions.”