Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the senior Republican in the United States Senate spoke on the Senate floor on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the commencement of the weekend’s March for Life events.
Mr. President, January 22 is known for the decision in which the Supreme Court degraded human life by degrading the Constitution. The Court used judicially tragic means to achieve a morally and culturally tragic end. Thankfully, however, January 22 is also known for another, radically different, event known as the March for Life. Every year for decades, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens have come here to Washington to do just that – march for life. They represent what once was the norm, the belief that life itself is precious and that each human being has inherent dignity and worth. By coming to Washington year after year, they stake their claim that those principles can once again prevail.
The full speech, as prepared for delivery, is below.
Mr. President, tomorrow is January 22, a date that has become known for two related but radically different reasons. First, it is the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Roe v. Wade that imposed on America the most permissive abortion regime in the world. That decision degraded human life by degrading the Constitution.
At the center of the debate over the morality, legality, or policy of abortion is the fact that each abortion kills a living human being. That this fact is inescapable does not prevent many from trying mightily to escape it but it cannot be avoided, obscured, or ignored. Let me repeat: each abortion kills a living human being. That fact informed President Ronald Reagan when he wrote a moving essay in 1983 titled Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation. He wrote: “We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life – the unborn – without diminishing the value of all human life.” The real question, he said, is not about when human life begins but about the value of human life. I believe that remains the real question today.
Starting even before America’s founding, the law had been on a steady march toward protecting human beings before birth. The 19th century movement that succeeded in prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother was led by medical professionals and civil rights activists. That consensus, however, began to unravel in the 20th century.
In 1948, the United States voted in favor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes in its preamble the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of “all members of the human family.” Like every member of this body, I am a member of the human family because I am a living human being. Article 3 of the declaration states that “everyone has the right to life.”
Words such as universal and inherent and all are unambiguous and clear. Only 25 years later, however, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision declared quite the opposite, that the right to life is actually not universal and does not belong to every member of the human family. The Court said, in effect, that some members of the human family get to determine whether others live or die.
The contradictions continued. On April 2, 1992, the United States Senate ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 6 declares: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” This time, it took the Supreme Court just 88 days to send the opposite message. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court reaffirmed its decision that the U.S. Constitution protects the right to abortion. In other words, the right to life is not inherent, it cannot be protected by law, and it can be arbitrarily taken away.
This sort of confusion about the fundamental value of human life has put the United States in an appalling position. The United States is one of only seven nations in the world to allow abortion even into the sixth month of pregnancy. We join on that list China and North Korea, which are hardly champions of human rights. More children are killed by abortion in two days here in America than all American servicemembers who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last year, we all witnessed the depths to which this degradation of human life leads. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is in the dark business of trafficking in baby body parts and uses word games and spin to hide what it is actually doing. These aren’t children or babies, says Planned Parenthood, they are products of conception. These aren’t body parts, they are tissue specimens. This should come as no surprise. Stripped of inherent dignity and worth, human beings easily become commodities.
Last week, in his final State of the Union Address, President Obama said that a future of opportunity for our families and a peaceful planet for our kids are within our reach. How can that possibly occur without a basic commitment to the fundamental value of human life and the inherent dignity and worth of every human being?
Let me highlight one more contrast. Early feminists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton published and edited a newspaper titled The Revolution. They editorialized against abortion and even rejected ads for abortifacient drugs, arguing that abortion was a tool for oppressing women. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a degree from an American medical school, strongly opposed abortion. Dr. Charlotte Denman Lozier, another trailblazer for women in the medical profession, helped and defended women who were pressured to have abortions. One writer described Dr. Lozier’s work as “thoroughly woman-affirming and life-affirming.”
Those priorities of being both pro-woman and pro-life have today been made enemies instead of allies. Today, the right to abortion and even its actual incidence have, for many, become signs or symbols of progress instead of oppression. The idea that the act of killing a living human being should be held up as a step forward, as a light to guide our way, strikes me as deeply misguided and as something to mourn rather than celebrate. We should instead deepen the conviction that all human beings have inherent dignity and worth. That once was, and should be again, the foundation for our culture, society, and yes, even our politics.
Mr. President, the Supreme Court not only degraded human life in its Roe v. Wade decision, but did so by degrading the Constitution. The Court found a right to abortion not in the real Constitution but in a Constitution of its own making. The real Constitution would not allow the Court impose its own values on the nation, and so the Court simply created a different Constitution that would. By claiming to find an unwritten right in our written Constitution, the Justices seized control of the Constitution that is supposed to control them.
If it is possible, I urge my colleagues to set aside the particular subject of abortion and consider what this really means. All public officials, including Supreme Court Justices, take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution, the real Constitution, is supposed to be the primary way that the American people impose limits on government. In fact, as the Supreme Court recognized in its 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the Constitution is written down so that those limits on government will be neither mistaken nor forgotten. In his farewell address in 1796, President George Washington said that the people’s control over the Constitution is the heart of our system of government. Our freedom depends on it.
With decisions like Roe v. Wade, however, the Supreme Court takes control of the Constitution away from the people, distorts our system of government, and compromises the freedom that system makes possible. Thomas Jefferson warned against allowing the Supreme Court to twist and shape the Constitution into any form it pleased yet that is exactly what the Court does in decisions like Roe v. Wade. Instead of conforming their decisions to the real Constitution, the Justices conform the Constitution to their own preferences, values, and agendas. They turn their oath to support and defend the Constitution into an oath to support and defend themselves.
Mr. President, January 22 is known for the decision in which the Supreme Court degraded human life by degrading the Constitution. The Court used judicially tragic means to achieve a morally and culturally tragic end. Thankfully, however, January 22 is also known for another, radically different, event known as the March for Life. Every year for decades, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens have come here to Washington to do just that – march for life. They represent what once was the norm, the belief that life itself is precious and that each human being has inherent dignity and worth. By coming to Washington year after year, they stake their claim that those principles can once again prevail.
There is reason for hope. More than 70 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in most or all circumstances. That figure has not changed in more than 40 years. What has changed is that more Americans today identify themselves as pro-life than as pro-choice. Large majorities favor a range of limitations on abortion and in 2014 elected scores of new pro-life legislators at both the state and federal level. And, perhaps most encouraging of all, the percentage of young people who believe that abortion should not be permitted in most or all circumstances has risen steadily and significantly. The number of abortions reported each year to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped by 50 percent in the last 25 years.
The organization Feminists for Life was founded in 1972, before Roe v. Wade sent us into this tailspin. They have said for years that women deserve better than abortion. Life, not death, should be our priority. I hope and pray that more and more of us will be, in large and small ways, each and every day, marching for life.
