Sen. Santorum’s concluding remarks on the eve of the vote to override Clinton’s veto of the partial-birth abortion ban. The vote came up short, and this ghastly procedure sadly remained legal:
(September 17, 1998)
“We somehow see little children, little babies, different than older children. Older children—if you have killed your older children, that is really bad. We have no sympathy for you. But somehow, if you killed a baby just born we try to figure out a way to get around it. We try to figure out a way that that does not quite meet the threshold of murder. If you look at the punishments meted out—substantially lower. They are substantially lower than other murder cases. We just do not value those little babies as much.
“Why? Why? Is it any mystery why? If we start, as we have, down the path of not valuing those little babies because we do not value them in the womb, or four-fifths outside the womb, or just newly outside the womb, who is next? Look around. Who is going to be next? Who is going to be the next group of people who we are not going to value, who does not have the might to force down what they believe is right? I made it. I am here in this body. I am whole. I am healthy. If you have not made it yet, watch it, because it then depends on whether you are on the committee that decides, or you are on the court that decides who lives and who dies. Because there is no line anymore. There is no truth on which we are basing this. There is no `life or nonlife.’ There is might. There is political power and that is what determines who lives and dies, who is valuable and who is not.
“Tomorrow, 34 Senators can exercise their might on who lives and dies. They can decide for a country that a group of people, a group of little helpless babies, do not belong.
“I am hopeful that when tomorrow comes, after much prayer tonight by so many people all over the country, and the world, that three more Members will open their eyes when they wake up in the morning and realize that but for the grace of God, there go I, and that we have to open our hearts more and include the least among us, the little children.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.”
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