Mr. Speaker: In his classic novel Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has his murderous protagonist Raskolnikov complain that “Man can get used to anything, the beast!”

That we are even debating this issue–that we have to argue about the legality of an abortionist plunging a pair of scissors into the back of the neck of a tiny child whose trunk, arms, and legs have already been born, and then suctioning out his brains–only confirms Dostoyevsky’s harsh truth.

We were told in committee by an attending nurse that the little arms and legs stop flailing and suddenly stiffen as the scissors is plunged in. People who say “I feel your pain” can’t be referring to that little infant.

What kind of people have we become, that this “procedure” is even a matter for debate? Can’t we draw the line at torture? And if we can’t, what’s become of us? We are incensed at ethnic cleansing–How then can we tolerate INFANT CLEANSING!

There is no argument here about when a human life begins. The child who is destroyed is certainly alive, certainly human, and certainly brutally destroyed.

The justification for abortion has always been the claim that a woman can do what she wants with her own body. If you still believe this 4/5th’s delivered baby is a part of the mother’s body, your ignorance is invincible.

I have finally figured out why supporters of abortion-on-demand fight this infanticide ban tooth and claw–because, for the first time since Roe v. Wade, the focus is on the baby and the harm that abortion inflicts on an unborn child–or, in this instance, a 4/5th’s born child. That child, whom the advocates of abortion-on-demand have done everything in their power to make us ignore, to dehumanize, is as much the bearer of human rights as any member of this House. To deny those rights is more than the betrayal of a powerless individual whom some find burdensome. It betrays the central promise of America; that there is, in this land, justice for all.

The supporters of abortion-on-demand have exercised their capacity for self-deception by detaching themselves from any sympathy whatsoever for the unborn child–and in so doing they separate themselves from the instinct for justice that gave birth to our country.

The President, reacting angrily to this challenge to his veto, claims not understand why the morality of those who support a ban on partial-birth abortions is superior to the morality of “compassion” that, he insists, informed his decision to reject our ban on what Senator Moynihan has said is too close to infanticide.

Let me explain.

There is no moral, nor, for that matter, medical justification for this barbaric assault on a partially-born infant. Dr. Pamela Smith, Director of Medical Education in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Chicago’s Mt. Sinai Hospital testified to that.

The abortionist who is a principal perpetrator of these atrocities, Dr. Martin Haskell, has conceded that at least 80% of the partial-birth abortions he performs are entirely elective, and he admits to over 1,000 of these abortions.

While we are told about some extreme cases of malformed babies (as though life is only for the privileged, the planned, and the perfect), Dr. James McMahon listed 9 such abortions he performed because the baby had a cleft lip.

Many other physicians, who care about both mother and the unborn child, have made it clear that this procedure is never a medical necessity, but merely a “convenience” for those who choose to abort late in pregnancy, when it becomes physically difficult to dismember the unborn child in the womb.

The President’s claim that he wants to “solve the problem” by adding a “health” exemption to the partial-birth abortion ban is spurious: as anyone who has spent ten minutes studying the federal law understands, “health” exemptions are so broadly construed by the court as to make any ban utterly meaningless.

There is one consistent commitment that has survived the twists and turns of policy during this administration: and that is its unshakable commitment to a legal regime of abortion-on-demand. Nothing is, or will be done, to make abortion “rare.” No legislative or regulatory act will be allowed to impede the most permissive abortion license in the democratic world.

The President would do us all a favor, and make a modest contribution to the health of our democratic process–if he would simply concede the obvious, and spare us further exhibitions of manufactured grief.

In one of his memoirs, Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote about the loss of 1.2 million lives in World War II: he said: “The loss of lives that might have otherwise been creatively lived–scars the mind of the civilized world.”

Mr. Speaker, our souls have been scarred by one and a half million abortions in this country every year !Our souls have so much scar tissue there isn’t room for anymore.

What do we mean by “human dignity” if we subject innocent children to brutal execution, when they are almost born?

We all hope and pray for “death with dignity”–what is “dignified” about a death caused by having a scissors stabbed into your neck so that your brains can be suctioned out?

We have had long and bitter debates in this House about “assault weapons”–those scissors and that suction machine are “assault weapons,” worse than any AK-47–you might miss with an AK-47–the abortionist never misses with his assault weapon.

It isn’t just the babies that are dying for the lethal sin of being unwanted. We are dying, and not from the darkness, but frpm the cold: the coldness of self-brutalization that chills our sensibilities and allows us to think that this unspeakable act is an act of “compassion.”

If you vote to uphold this veto–if you vote to maintain the legality of a “procedure” that is revolting to even the most hardened heart–then please don’t ever use the word “compassion” again.

A word about anesthesia. Advocates of Partial Birth abortions tried to tell us the baby doesn’t feel pain–the mother’s anesthesia is transmitted to the baby. We took testimony from 5 of the country’s top anesthesiologists and they said this was impossible–that result would take so much anesthesia it would kill the mother.

By upholding this tragic veto, you join the network of complicity in supporting what is essentially a crime against humanity–for that little almost born infant, struggling to live is a member of the human family. Partial Birth Abortion is a lethal assault against the very idea of human rights, and destroys, along with a defenseless little baby, the moral foundation of our democracy. Democracy isn’t after all, a mere process–it assigns fundamental values to each human being–the first of which is the unalienable right to life.

One of the great errors of modern politics is the unavailing attempt to separate our private consciences from our public acts. It can’t be done. At the end of the 20th century, is the crowning achievement of our democracy to treat the weak, the powerless, the unwanted as things to be disposed of? If so, we haven’t elevated justice–we have disgraced it.

This isn’t a debate about sectarian religious doctrine nor about policy options–this is a debate about our understanding of human dignity–what it means to be human. Our moment in history is marked by mortal conflict between a culture of death and a culture of life.

I am not in the least embarrassed to say that I believe that one day each of us will be called upon to render an account for what we have done, and what we have failed to do, in our lifetime. And while I believe in a merciful God, I would be terrified at the thought of having to explain, at the final judgment, why I stood unmoved while Herod’s slaughter of the innocents was being reenacted here in my own country.

This debate has been about an unspeakable horror. And while the details are graphic and grisly, it has been helpful for all of us to recognize the full brutality of what goes on in America’s abortuaries, day in and day out, week after week, year after year. We’re not talking about abstractions here. We are talking about life and death at their most elemental. And we ought to face the truth of what we oppose, or support, stripped of all euphemisms.

We have talked so much about the grotesque, permit me a word about beauty. We all have our own images of the beautiful: the face of a loved one, a dawn, a sunset, the evening star. I believe that nothing in this world of wonders is more beautiful than innocence of a child. Do you know what a child is? She is an opportunity for love; and a handicapped child is an even greater opportunity for love.

Mr. Speaker, we risk our souls–we risk our humanity–when we trifle with that innocence, or demean it, or brutalize it. We need more caring and less killing.

Let the innocence of the unborn have the last word in this debate.

Let their innocence appeal to what President Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

Prove Raskolnikov wrong. This is something we will never get used to. Make it clear, once again, that there is justice for all–even for the most defenseless in this our land.