Barbara Cubin: “I am a mother myself and married to a physician. There is very little that any of the previous speakers can tell me…”

“I am a mother myself and married to a physician. There is very little that any of the previous speakers can tell me about abortions and about pregnancies and about life that I do not already know. One thing I do know is our Constitution guarantees us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The most fundamental of those things is life. In our State laws in many States, the sanctity of unborn life is already regarded as a right. Let me tell my colleagues how. Criminally, if a woman is assaulted and loses her child, the person who assaulted her can be charged with manslaughter, can be charged with murder. Even if the mother survives, that child, that unborn child, has a right to live. If someone negligently kills the father of an unborn child, the mother or a guardian can sue on behalf of that unborn child for negligence. So in the civil courts, we recognize that unborn children have a right to live. And to think of delivering a child up to its head and then removing the brain from that child that is viable and that can live out of the womb. There is a home in America where that child could be loved and wanted. To deliver a child that could live and kill it is absolutely a mortal sin. It is a legal wrong. It is against everything that we stand for in this country. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote to override the President's veto.”