Floor Statements
Floor Debate on S. 403, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act
Washington, DC,
September 25, 2006
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I have two questions about this bill that are completely aside from the merits. One is, why are we doing this bill? We passed the bill earlier. We passed essentially this bill earlier this session, the Senate passed a bill, and now we are passing a bill that isn't the same as the Senate bill. Why? So that no law, so nothing becomes law this year. So I would like to ask the chairman, the distinguished chairman, why we are not passing the same bill the Senate passed? Because, otherwise, there is no possibility, as I see it, of getting an agreement before we leave. I will yield. Mr. SENSENBRENNER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The Senate bill has loopholes wide enough to drive a 18-wheeler through. If we are doing something, we might as well do something that means a bit rather than simply passing a piece of paper. Mr. NADLER. Then why are we passing a bill again that we already passed earlier this year if the Senate bill is not the same and is not satisfactory? Mr. SENSENBRENNER. If the gentleman will further yield, this is in the hopes that the Senate will look at this modified bill in prayerful reflection and send it on to the President. Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time. In other words, we pass the bill, the Senate passed a different bill which the distinguished chairman thinks has many loopholes, and may have, I haven't read it, and so we are coming back. Here we are, the last week before we adjourn, we haven't passed any of the appropriations bills into law, not one, and we are spending time on this bill when we have already passed it. And if the Senate has not passed it and they want to, they should negotiate with the Senate, they should have a conference committee. Instead, we are passing it again. And I have to assume that the real reason we are doing it is just for political reasons, to rev up the troops of the antiabortion people for the election, and there is no real intent to pass a bill. I have another question. This bill says in the key line: Whoever knowingly transports a minor across a State line with the intent that such minor obtains an abortion, blah, blah shall be fined or imprisoned. My question, sir, and I will yield to you, is what does ``transport'' mean? Mr. SENSENBRENNER. If the gentleman will yield, it means the same thing as the transportation of someone across the State line in violation of the Mann Act. Mr. NADLER. Well, then reclaiming my time, I think that this bill is simply not very well drafted in that case, because in the Mann Act certain things are obvious. Let's assume that you have a young woman and a young man, her boyfriend, who jointly go across State lines to get her an abortion. She is driving. She is transporting him, not the other way around. Should someone be guilty or not guilty depending on who is driving and who is not driving? That doesn't seem to make sense. Mr. Speaker, the arguments against this bill are manifold. Number one, the arguments against parental notification and consent are where you have a violent parent or where you have a parent that the child cannot confide in, you shouldn't require that. Ninety percent of the time there is no problem, it is fine. Sometimes there is, and you risk the life or the health of the child to require that she tell the parent that she is pregnant. Number two, in such a situation, the child may confide, hopefully, there is someone she can confide in, her brother, her sister, her best friend, her clergyman, her teacher, and we would make them criminals if they help her. The gentleman from New Jersey talked about the abortionist conspiring to take her across State lines. It is not the abortionist. It is a friend or a colleague or a clergyman or a grandparent. You shouldn't make criminals of them. Nor should we seek to enforce the law of one State in another State. Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Would the gentleman yield? Mr. NADLER. And. Finally, and after this statement I will yield, this law also says that if someone is asked to perform, if a doctor is asked to perform an abortion on a young woman, on a minor from another State, he must notify the parents in that State whether or not that State requires parental notification. So we are expanding, we are now putting the Federal Government and saying to a State when only two States are involved, neither which have a parental notification law, you must because we say so. There is no justification for that. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me make it very clear. What I just said was that if you go to the Yellow Pages and look at some of the ads and in newspapers and in other media, the abortionists actively try to solicit young girls 13, 14, 15, 16, to go across State lines. And you know as well as I do adult males, including predatory males, read those ads and act. All they have to do is go to New Jersey or some State other than Pennsylvania, where there is no parental involvement law, and thereby circumvent the parental notification, parental consent in that particular State. Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time. I can understand that particular concern if this bill made it a crime to transport a minor across State lines for the purpose of getting an abortion, et cetera, et cetera, for money. If that person transporting that young girl were being paid to do it, then I think that there might be something we would want to do about that. But we are not talking about that. Well, we may be talking about that, but the bill is certainly not limited to that. The bill applies to the situation where the person, quote, unquote, transporting her may be her boyfriend, her brother or sister, her grandmother, her uncle, her aunt, her best friend or clergyman or a teacher. Anyone who is doing it with the best motives to help her, with whom some of us here may disagree that that is the best motive, but it is not a predatory motive. So if you want to write a bill against a predatory person, write a bill against the predatory person. Write a bill against someone who does it for a commercial reason, for pay, but not against all these other people. I reserve the balance of my time. |