Lankford: “Religious intolerance is a personal choice, not a legal requirement in America.”
Last year, Lankford introduced the Conscience Protection Act to protect healthcare providers, including healthcare professionals, entities, and health insurance plans from government discrimination if they decline to perform an abortion. Lankford earlier today joined the official announcement at HHS, along with Acting Secretary
Transcript:
Mr. President, I want to get a chance to address an ongoing conversation that's going on in
As some individuals don't want to discuss the issue of abortion or would simply say that it's a woman's choice, need to set that aside and ignore it. There are a whole group of students that are rising up and saying, wait a minute that child in the womb has ten fingers and ten toes, unique DNA that's different from the mom and dad, the child feels pain in the womb and has a beating heart. That doesn't sound like tissue to me. That sounds like a child. They're raising great issues that quite frankly science reinforces as well. Last week, I had the opportunity to be able to stop by one of the great research facilities in
We have, as a culture, determined that life is valuable. Human life especially is valuable and precious. The challenge that we have is determining when that life begins. Myself and millions of others believe life begins at conception. When that child has different DNA then the mom or the dad, that tissue is not just the mom's tissue at that point, it's growing independently. There's no difference in that child in the womb and the child that's in the backyard playing and laughing and going down the slide other than time. There's no difference.
Last year the Cleveland Cavalier's guard JR Harrison and his wife had little Dakota. And when I say little Dakota, I mean little Dakota. She was born at less than a pound at 19 weeks of development. She left the hospital five months later at 7 pounds, 4 ounces. 7 pounds, 5 ounces actually. When she left the hospital, it was a remarkable event. It was celebrated all over social media for this guard for the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers and this beautiful child leaving. Dakota is now a year old. It's been interesting the stir that happened around her birth. A lot of people stopped and thought about a child that small and that young. It was interesting the
It is remarkable to hear the stories of surgery that's happening in utero. In 1995,
Now we see children at 20, 21, 22-weeks of development and being born and being natural, healthy, great children. We need to be able to catch up in law. We may disagree on a lot of things on life. As I've already stated, I believe life begins at conception. But in this body, I know there is a lot of conversation to say how do we actually get to a sense of commonality and common ground on these issues. Let me lay down three different areas that I would say that maybe we can find some common ground on these three areas. We may disagree on when life begins, can we at least agree that Americans have a freedom of conscience? Can we at least agree on late-term abortions when a child is clearly viable? And can we at least agree when a child is born alive, they should be protected? Let me hit those three quickly.
The first one is basic freedom of conscience. Allowing an individual to be able to live out their conscience. I spoke to several nurses a few months ago. Those nurses, when they were hired at the hospitals they worked in told the individuals in HR and the physicians they work with, they believe that life begins at conception and they had a moral and conscious belief that they wanted to protect children. And they were told at the moment: you will not have to participate in abortions. We understand your conscious belief. We'll protect your conscious belief. And for years they did not. And then suddenly they ran short in nurses at one moment and they pulled each of them in at different times in different hospitals in different states. They told stories of being pulled into a procedure being told on the way in we need you in this procedure arriving only to find out it was an abortion they were being forced to assist with. They were appalled to be a part of the death of a child. Rather than protecting the life of a child. But each of them was told, you will lose your job if you don't participate in the taking of this child's life.
That's an unfair place to be able to put them in. Individuals should be able to have the freedom of conscience and to be able to live out their moral and spiritual beliefs. I would never go to an abortion doctor and force him to peacefully protest against his own abortion clinic. That would be absurd. But for some reason, pro-abortion hospitals see no issue at times compelling a staff member to participate in something they find objectionable, even when they've made their stance clear. We should never force a person to administer a lethal injection in a prison if they have a moral objection to the death penalty. That seems only reasonable. We're rightfully furious when a man threatens a woman with firing if she doesn't respond to his advances. No one would say if she doesn't like his advances, she can just go find another job. But for some in our culture, they want to look away when that same man threatens a woman with firing if she doesn't violate her conscience and help perform an abortion. They're willing to tell her, just quit and go find another job. What's the difference? We wouldn't compel a vegan to eat meat at a company barbecue, would we? Why would we compel a person to assist in the taking of a life when they're personally offended by the practice? The right of conscience should be protected for every person. Religious intolerance is a personal choice, not a legal requirement in America.
Late-term abortions are another area I think we should find common ground on and should be able to protect these children. We should agree that elective late-term abortions should be ended in America. This is an elective abortion after five months of pregnancy when the child's nervous system is fully developed, they can feel pain at that point. We in America, because of the pro-abortion lobby and the activists around, have lost track of this simple fact. We are one of seven nations in the world that allow elective abortions after 22-weeks of gestation. In fact, of those seven nations that allow abortions after 22 weeks of gestation, three of those:
It's interesting, The
Let me add one more detail to this that's painful to even discuss. Of those late-term abortions that occur, there's 1.3 percent of those abortions that occur during this late time period. The child is too large and too well developed to actually have a traditional abortion procedure. So the abortions are done by the abortion doctor reaching in with a tool into the womb and literally pulling the child's arms and legs off allowing the child to bleed to death in the womb and then pulling its parts out a piece at a time. Why do we allow that in America? 191 other nations do not. All of
Last statement. I have some colleagues that want to be able to join me in this conversation as well. We should be able to agree on a simple principle, that if an abortion is conducted and yet it's botched and instead of destroying the child in the womb, the abortion doctor actually induces the delivery. In those rare cases the current practice is, when the child is delivered, everyone in the operating room backs away and allows the child to die of exposure on the table. Because they can't actually take the life anymore. It's been fully delivered.
Can we as
Read this original document at: https://www.lankford.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-lankford-advocates-for-life-religious-freedom-on-senate-floor-
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