Political Quotes

“Debates as the one we are having today always focus on the differences between us; and there are, in fact, differences between us. We who offer this substitute amendment believe that the 90 percent of abortions that occur in the first trimester of pregnancy should be private and legal. The proponents of this bill do not. We believe that the 99.6 percent of all abortions performed in the country that are not affected by this legislation at all should be private and legal. They do not. But there are points of agreement. We all believe that abortions that might be performed post-viability, that are not done to protect the life or preserve the health of the woman, should be illegal. We agree on that; and now let us see which of these bills, theirs or ours, actually accomplishes this goal. Proponents of the underlying bill claim that their legislation will stop a particular type of abortion. They are wrong. It will not. Thirty-one States have passed this legislation and the United States Supreme Court in the famous case of Stenberg v. Carhart deemed those bills, which are essentially identical to this bill, unconstitutional; and fundamentally, they said that what was wrong with those bills was that they made no exceptions for when the woman's health was a serious issue. Our substitute, not the underlying bill, complies with the Court's requirement that there must be a health exception.”