Planned Parenthood - July 21, 2015

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my continued outrage at now two abhorrent videos that have been released in the last week, in which two of Planned Parenthood’s senior doctors describe the process by which they and their coworkers kill unborn children and harvest their organs for sale.

Like many Americans, I was shocked not only by what I learned about Planned Parenthood’s standard practices, but by the cold, callous indifference in which Dr. Deborah Nucatola and Dr. Mary Gatter, detailed the barbaric murder of society’s most vulnerable children.

In the United States, we provide protections for the least among us in numerous ways, from medical research, to welfare programs, to health care assistance.

Yet here we stand on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, to discuss whether the sale of human body parts harvested from aborted children violates basic human dignity and perhaps even the law.

Mr. Speaker, the question that strikes me today is not whether this practice is immoral or illegal, for surely no Member of Congress or humanity can in good conscience claim that we support these heinous activities.

Instead I am left considering what we could have done, or perhaps what we should have done, to protect women and innocent children from this outrageous practice

And I am left to think, what kind of nation allows these heinous acts to continue?

We are the United States of America, a country founded on the belief that each individual holds dignity and worth in the eyes of our creator.

If Planned Parenthood is discovered to have been altering abortion procedures so as to sell unborn baby hearts, livers, lungs or other organs, then they have violated their own guidelines as well as federal laws from partial-birth abortion to the sale of human organs.

It will be up to Congress to intervene on behalf of the thousands of unborn children.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear to me that there is a prevailing attitude inside Planned Parenthood that is so disgusting, so horrifying and so disturbing that it warrants a Congressional investigation and ACTION.

I thank House leadership and Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman Upton for granting our request for an investigation into this unconscionable activity now!

And especially, I thank members of the Missouri State Legislature who have committed to investigating Planned Parenthood in the state of Missouri, assuring Missourians that our laws prohibit these unthinkable acts and hold Planned Parenthood accountable for any wrongdoing.

Mr. Speaker, we have a duty, as elected Representatives to the United States to stand up for the most vulnerable among us, to lend a voice to the voiceless, and stand up for injustice.

And I will continue to fight for the day when abortion and the atrocities associated with it are not only illegal, but unthinkable.

I yield back the remainder of my time.