Political Quotes

“I respond to that by saying I think it points out the cruelty, unnecessary cruelty, of doing the procedure that we are attempting to ban here. What was done by the woman and the doctor in this case, I think, first off, the baby was not delivered, was not outside the mother, and then painfully and brutally killed. The baby was killed in utero by an injection. While I don't like abortion, period, I think that less shocks the conscience of our country than delivering a baby, as in the case of partial birth, most of them being healthy with healthy mothers. In this case, that is not the case. But there is a real distinction here, and what I think your case points out is that there are viable, less-invasive, less-dangerous-to-the-mother alternatives available, even for cases where you have pregnancies that have gone awry, and that are less cruel and barbaric to the baby and less dangerous to the woman. You talked about preserving maternal health. There is nothing more that I want to accomplish with this bill than preserving maternal health. But we have ample evidence, including from the AMA who testified, that this procedure is not healthy for women, and there are other procedures, such as the one the Senator outlined, that are safer for women who may elect to have an abortion--a legal abortion, which we don't outlaw with this bill. We just say that there are alternatives.”