Political Quotes

“In closing, I simply also urge opposition to the Daschle amendment and support for the underlying bill to ban partial-birth abortion. The Daschle amendment, although well-intended and with a good, strong effort to narrow the definition of health of the mother, simply does not accomplish what it intends. The bill tries to close the loophole. It is a loophole in the sense that there are many people, unfortunately, who exploit the definition of health of a mother to their benefit, to perform abortions very late, second trimester, third trimester. Unfortunately, there are people like that. We have heard about them. We have described their cases. Some of them exploit the loophole of health of the mother to use the partial-birth-abortion procedure. I have argued that the Daschle amendment does not outlaw, does not ban, the partial-birth abortion. And if the criteria are met in his bill, people will still be performing the partial-birth procedure. Second, the bill, although it tries to narrow the definition, fails. Why? Because you can't separate physical health from mental health, from emotional health.”