Among the speakers at the Jan. 19 March for Life rally was Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. and a parishioner of St. Gregory the Great, Hamilton Square.
Following is his address to the hundreds of thousands who descended on the nation’s capital to demonstrate for the Respect Life movement:
“Every one of you here today and millions of others throughout the country and world, are an integral part of the greatest human rights struggle on earth.
Forty-five years ago, the Supreme Court abandoned women and babies to what is now the multi-billion dollar abortion industry.
The tragic result: since 1973, more than 60 million unborn children in America have been dismembered or chemically poisoned – a death toll that equates with the entire population of England.
Abortionists have imposed serious harm on women – the co-victims of abortion.
Out of unconditional love and compassion and empathy, you and I are here to defend victims.
That is why we March. Love saves lives.
We march to recommit to tangibly assisting women in crisis. According to Heartbeat International, there are over 2,752 pregnancy help centers, medical clinics and mobile ultrasound units in the U.S. that helped some 300,000 mothers choose life last year.
We march to reach out and welcome and care for women who have had abortions – and the growing number of courageous women who are silent no more and bear witness to the truth.
Even abortion clinic workers are having second thoughts.
National Public Radio (NPR) last week on “All Things Considered” did a story on former Planned Parenthood director now pro-life leader Abby Johnson’s work with abortion clinic workers who quit their jobs.
Annette Lancaster, a former manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic in North Carolina said on NPR that the work made her feel “dark and morbid” and said she was “troubled by the way she and some of the other workers referred to fetal remains.” She said: “I just started being able to use the deep freezer in my home by going through [therapy] because we used to call the freezer the ‘nursery’… and we used to think that was funny.”
Led effectively by the Republican leadership including Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McCarthy, earlier today the House passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act sponsored by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn.
For decades, babies have survived late term abortions – only to be killed after birth. A Philadelphia Inquirer article 37 years ago (August 1981) called baby survival “the Dreaded Complication.”
Dr. Willard Cates, M.D., former head of the Centers of Disease Control Abortion Surveillance Unit, was quoted saying, “[Live births] are little known because organized medicine, from fear of public clamor and legal action, treats them more as an embarrassment to be hushed up than a problem to be solved. It’s like turning yourself in to the IRS for an audit… What is there to gain? The tendency is not to report because there are only negative incentives.”
When an undercover investigator recently asked an abortionist about the protocol for checking for signs of life in a baby born after an abortion attempt, the doctor responded: “I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”
The tendency not to report means that babies who survive abortion are not only systematically killed but everyone in the room participates in the cover-up.
By requiring under significant penalty that health care practitioners present at the time the child survives the abortion to exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as any other child born alive at the same gestational age and then immediately get the baby to a hospital, the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act will save babies lives.
After eight years of the Obama Administration’s enabling of government coercion through non-enforcement of America’s conscience laws, the Trump Administration announced new efforts and a new office – the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division – to enforce the conscience rights of individuals and entities.
No one should be forced to participate or be complicit in killing a child. No one.
Let me end with a call to increased prayer and fasting asking God to protect the weakest and most vulnerable and to heal.”