Mr. Speaker, this legislation, which we have already considered in this Congress, poses a real threat to the lives and health of young women. It would require a minor who is pregnant, possibly as a result of parental abuse, incest, to carry the parental notification laws of her home State on her back to another State and hold doctors, grandparents, clergy and anyone else who tries to help her a criminal. The sponsors, not satisfied with extending State laws into other States, now want to enforce those State laws in other countries.

Not since the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 have we used the power of the Federal Government to enforce the laws of one State on the territory of another.

This latest crazy quilt of restrictions obviously has but one purpose, to impede the practice of medicine, to ensure that young women will have as few options as possible, to make criminals of relatives and adults, or minors, for that manner, who try to help them, and to teach those States, such as mine, that do not believe that these laws promote adolescent health, that Congress knows best and our citizens and our States do not.

Often, that adult assisting the minor is a grandparent, a sibling or member of the clergy. In some cases, the young woman may not be able to go to her parents because the parents are a danger to her.

We all agree that, ideally, a young woman faced with a choice of having abortion should go to her parents. But in some cases she may not be able to. That is what happened to Spring Adams, a 13-year-old from Idaho. She was shot to death by her father after he found out that she planned to terminate a pregnancy, a pregnancy caused by his own act of incest. But, under this bill, anyone who helped her cross the State line to get an abortion without telling her father so she could get shot would be guilty of a crime.

This bill also uses a narrow definition of medical emergency that seems to have been lifted from one of Attorney General Gonzalez's infamous torture memos. The prohibition ``does not apply if the abortion is necessary to save the life of the minor because her life was endangered by a physical disorder, physical injury or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself or because in the reasonable medical judgment of the minor's attending physician the delay in performing the abortion occasioned by fulfilling the prior requirement would cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the minor arising from continued pregnancy, not including psychological or emotional condition,'' so long as the physician notifies the parent within 24 hours.

The bill now also excludes ectopic pregnancies and the removal of a dead fetus, for which I suppose civilized people should be grateful.

It is progress, although it still falls far short of the protection for a woman's health required by the Constitution, which the courts have ruled requires an explicit exception to protect the life or health of the woman, not just those few conditions a few extremists find acceptable.

No mental health exception? That is the only justification for helping a young woman who has been raped by her father. There is certainly no physical risk, yet this bill would require a doctor to seek that father's permission.

There are many things far short of death or a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function that can endanger a young woman. She deserves prompt and professional medical care, and no matter how much some people don't like it, the Constitution protects her right to receive that care.

In a perfect world, loving, supportive and understanding families would join together to face these challenges. That is what happens in the majority of cases, with or without a law.

But we do not live in a perfect world. Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists. Some young people can turn only to their clergy or to a grandparent or a sibling or some other trusted adult. And this bill would turn those people into criminals.

If a 16-year-old girl was accompanied across a State line by her 16-year-old boyfriend for an abortion, this would make the boyfriend a criminal. If a rabbi or priest or minister helped her across the State line, knowing that her father or mother were violent and therefore they couldn't dare ask for parental notification, this would turn them into a criminal. The same thing with a grandfather or a brother or a sister. We should not be turning people who are helping people in distress into criminals. That is wrong.

This bill, although slightly modified, is as wrong and as dangerous today as it was when this House considered this last time.

There is another thing, too. We believe in 50 different States in this country. We believe in State sovereignty within the Federal limits. We call the States laboratories of democracy.

Many States, I think more than half, have chosen to have parental consent notification laws. Other States have chosen not to. We ought to respect the States that have chosen not to, as well as those that have chosen to do so. And to say that because someone comes from a State with a parental notification law, if she goes to a State without a parental notification law, someone who helps her to go there is committing a crime, I think that is unconstitutional and is a violation of the right to interstate commerce, to interstate travel.

But it also, as I said before, is an attempt to say to New York, which does not require parental notification and consent, that the law of some other State which does must prevail in your State as long as the person comes from that State. She can't escape it. She carries it with her on her back.

We have never tried to enforce the laws of one State in another like that since the Fugitive Slave Act of the 1850s. It is not a good precedent. This bill deserves to be rejected.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.