Please find below the text of a speech Congressman Fortenberry gave on the House floor last night. You can also view the speech, which is featured at the following link:
http://fortenberry.house.gov/

United States Congressman — First District, Nebraska
Jeff Fortenberry

July 14, 2009

Madam Speaker, recently the Secretary of State appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and confirmed it is the Administration’s goal to include abortion as an integral element of “reproductive health care” provided by the United States overseas. This hearing came on the heels of the Secretary’s words of praise for Margaret Sanger as a personal heroine. Margaret Sanger was a notorious American eugenicist who advocated tirelessly for policies to eliminate persons she deemed inferior and unworthy to live, namely the poor, the immigrant, and the Black child.

While the Secretary at the hearing rightly deplored the racist comments attributed to Margaret Sanger, the Admini stration’s policies regrettably continue to champion abortion both at home and abroad. This continues despite the fact that more and more Americans oppose the practice, let alone using taxpayer dollars to fund it, or imposing it on persons across the world who may be weak and vulnerable.

Margaret Sanger’s world view should shock the conscience and evoke equal condemnation from thoughtful persons on both sides of the aisle.

For this reason, I was stunned to learn that in a July 12 interview with the New York Times, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg echoed the sentiments of Sanger. While explaining the outcome of Harris v. McRae, a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the Hyde Amendment, which disallows Medicaid funding for abortions, Justice Ginsburg said, “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. ”

Madame Speaker—did you hear that? Justice Ginsburg actually said,” there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that w e don’t want to have too many of. ”

Madame Speaker, to whom was Justice Ginsburg referring? Who would Justice Ginsburg prefer to not have live?

It is unfathomable that in this day and age, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court would articulate such a patently genocidal sentiment.

This is more of the same discredited amoral philosophy of social engineering that offers no comfort, no vision of the common bond of all humanity, particularly for the weak and vulnerable.

I know we have come much further than that in this society. Millions of Americans believe that we are big enough and loving enough as a nation to embrace the mother and her unborn child, and truly care for life. We can do better. We must do better. Women deserve better than abortion. America deserves better from its leaders.

Josh Moenning
Office of Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (NE-01)
Lincoln District Office
Telephone: 402-438-1598
Fax: 402-438-1604
Cell: 402-570-2708