Bob Schaffer's 2000 speech about abortion

The Rocky

Originally published 11:41 p.m., April 22, 2008
Updated 11:41 p.m., April 22, 2008

On Jan. 22, 2000, a month before his fifth child was due, U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer, R-Collins, made this speech in Fort Morgan about abortion.

In just a few hours our planet will have made its 22nd full revolution since that long anticipated night when we ushered in a new millennium, a new century, and a New Year. I'll admit now, I was a bit anxious about the whole ``Y2K'' thing, although outwardly, I dismissed the predictions of power outages, water shortages, and financial crashes as ``silly.''

Just before we were to leave for a New Year's Eve party, my wife Maureen returned from the grocery store to find me on the back porch filling up my daughter's swimming pool and some five-gallon cans with water. ``What are you doing out here in the cold?'' she asked. ``Oh!'' I said embarrassed. ``Checking for leaks.''

I turned off the hose and rushed in to help my wife put away the groceries--which included about $50 worth of batteries! Now, you have to understand, she holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. When she gets nervous, I get nervous. She said, ``Well, we just never seem to have them when we need them, and, by the way, good thinking on the water.''

Of course we now reflect on the turn of the millennium with a certain amount of amusement and remember all those TV news anchors grasping for things to say, reaching for laborious words to fill up the air time which might otherwise have been devoted to disaster. It turned out like the opening of Al Capone's safe. Nothing there. Nothing remarkable. Nothing changed. Our lives went on uninterrupted. Our world just kept revolving.

And here in America, our country was still the only country on the planet to recognize abortion as a constitutional right--a right that has been exercised 40 million times since it was first fabricated on this day in 1973. Despite the benevolent advice of our government, which it mandates be printed on every bottle of holiday champagne, the very unborn babies we are urged to protect still face more than a 1 in 4 chance they won't even make it out of the womb.

This 22nd day of the millennium marks the 27th year since Roe v. Wade, when our government stripped from the unborn child the fundamental Right to Life. Prior to that, fetuses were still babies, and the Constitution protected them, just like the Declaration of Independence suggests it should.

Somehow, those black-robed despots of the Court presumed to know better than God Himself. For 197 years, America had always accepted as ``self evident'' and true ``that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among them are Life'' and all the rest.

Tonight I want to congratulate this Pro-Life Alliance assembled here, because you have not abandoned that opening precept of our American Declaration. Nor have you abandoned the self-evident Truth that, regardless of the opinions of Washington, D.C.'s elite, the natural, God-given Rights of the unborn are still very much in force.

Your very presence here tonight reinforces it. Your money, your time, and most of all, your prayers are all testimony to the unifying force of the Creator and the true benevolence of Divine Providence. Indeed, it was 2000 years ago that He revealed to the world the way of victory over death, through a Child.

And it is because of the promise of the Christ Child that we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God hears our prayers for all souls. He hears our prayers that His mercy be generously dispensed upon the souls of the unborn, the souls of their mothers, their fathers, and even their executioners and all those who, through their own weakness, have become the counselors of darkness.

Our prayer and our mission here tonight is for life. Friends, the simple fact is, at abortion mills across the country, there is simply too much death, and too much violence. It is wrong, and it must stop. Whether perpetrated against the unborn, or any other human being, violence and premature death is always wrong.

The Greeks used to say ``in prosperity it is very easy to find a friend, but in adversity it is the most difficult of all things.'' I'm most fortunate to have some good friends here tonight who are not afraid of adversity, and I'm honored that they're here, especially, State Senator Marilyn Musgrave. She is one of the true heroines of Colorado politics, and among the strongest voices at the Capitol for those least able to defend themselves.

I'm extremely pleased to see young people who are concerned about human life, because I think the single most important responsibility of any society is the transmission of values from one generation to the next. That is of critical importance in a free society. We understand freedom, and true freedom means making choices that have real impact.

Self-government means that we make decisions that literally shape the future. Imagine that, God the Creator of origin allows us to be the creator of the future. We shape the world. The powerful meaning of that is perhaps articulated best in the Fifth Book of Moses, more commonly called Deuteronomy. Here, God says, ``I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore, chose life, that you and your descendents may live.''

Now, let me tell you how politicians read this.

Most politicians read Scripture like a set of statutes. There must be some loopholes in here, right? Maybe we can send this to the Rules Committee with a ``motion to instruct'' that will make it easier to deal with if and when it ever comes time to vote. Perhaps this really doesn't matter as long as a quorum is not present.

Well, as a politicians and a Christian, this verse really speaks to me. It reminds me of the media. Let me repeat it. ``I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day.'' I have lots of friends who are reporters. I've developed a certain level of camaraderie with some of them. Eventually you feel comfortable talking off the record about politics, personalities, and ideas--just shooting the breeze.

But when that reporter switches on the tape recorder, or flips open the notebook, it's time to get serious. My actions are now a matter of, well, a matter of record. Deuteronomy tells us the choices we all make are recorded in heaven. I remember quite vividly when my high school religion teacher described this within the context of ``free will.''

The verse continues, ``I've set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.'' You see God gives us the widest latitude in deciding. And more often than not the choices He gives us are black and white, polar opposites, sometime diametrically opposed: Life vs. death. Blessing vs. cursing. In these and lesser cases, the choices we make are important not just for ourselves. No, these choices are eternal and have an impact upon those who follow us.

As a United States Congressman, I'm asked to make lots of these big decisions. The challenge is to make choices that will make the future brighter than today. Those choices are not always easy to make. Being a leader is sometimes unpleasant.

When our leaders are unable to evaluate profound decisions within the proper context of ``life or death, blessing or cursing,'' they are prone to consult their pollsters. In fact, these kinds of policymakers are sometimes pejoratively referred to as ``poll vaulters.''

Poll vaulting is when you take a public opinion poll, find out where everyone's going, use the poll to vault yourself ahead of the crowd. When the crowd finally arrives at the point you're at, you say, ``I was here first. I'm the leader.''

If you think I exaggerate let me describe this advertisement from a political trade magazine. Across the top it says, ``ABORTION! Right to life? Women's rights? State laws?'' The copy says, ``As an elected official, do you really know what your constituents think about these issues? Legislators can't afford to be out of step with voters on this emotional issue. Let us design and conduct a survey of voters in your district, to help you develop your position on this most divisive issue of the decade.''

Friends, this is what's sick about Washington. This is not leadership. This is poll vaulting, and today we see elected officials in the highest offices in the land conducting polls every day to measure what they think we want to hear, and to carefully calculate the exact language so as to say it precisely right. What America needs are fewer politicians telling us what we want to hear, and more leaders who profess the truth.

It seems so simple, until you realize, our failure to address this phenomenon in our Churches, Synagogues, businesses, in the media, and yes, even our failure at the ballot box, has resulted in 40 million abortions. Friends, this is no small matter. And frankly, we should be winning because all the advantages are on our side.

Since our politicians read the polls, let's see what the polls say. First, let's get beyond the ``pro-life, pro-choice'' labels. You can give me a parachute and drop me out of a plane anywhere in America. In three of the five places I might land, the first person I see when asked, ``are you pro-choice,'' will answer ``yes;'' because ``choice'' is a powerful word, and no one wants to be against choice. That, by the way, goes for me. Yes, I'm pro-choice. The more choices the better as far as I'm concerned. In fact, in order to choose you must first be alive which is another reason I oppose abortion.

Now, The Chronicle of Higher Education recently found that among 250,000 entering college freshmen, support for legal abortion is at its lowest level since 1979. At UCLA, for example, 53.5 percent said they agreed abortion should be legal. That's 3% down from the previous year. I mention UCLA because I thought the number would be much higher there.

A 1998 New York Times/CBS poll found only 15 percent of Americans believe a woman should be permitted to have an abortion during the second trimester of pregnancy. Only 7 percent of women should be permitted to have an abortion during the last three months of pregnancy.

A recent Wirthlin poll found only 21 percent believe that abortion should be legal for any reason during the first three months of pregnancy. Only 9 percent feel abortion should be legal at any time during pregnancy and for any reason.

Most encouraging is that same Wirthlin poll found most Americans believe abortion should not be permitted after signs of life can be detected. A lopsided 61 percent disagree with the statement ``abortion should be permitted after fetal brainwaves are detected.'' Fifty eight percent agree with the statement, ``abortion should not be permitted after the fetal heartbeat has begun.''

What that says friends is that most people in America understand that choosing an abortion is a choice of diametrically opposed outcomes--that it should not be taken lightly. And don't think for a minute the value of human life is not considered. And that is an admission that, with rare exception, we all recognize the termination of a human life, and we all know it.

The beating of a heart. I saw that just a month ago. At the Schaffer house, we're all excited. Our fifth baby is due one month from today, on George Washington's birthday.

I went in for the well check with Maureen. I told the doctor I'd never seen an actual ultra sound. I'd only seen the still photos. He wheeled the cart in and said, ``what do you want to look at?'' I said the whole enchilada, head to toe. That's just what I got to see.

I counted all ten toes, fingers too. In fact I saw a hand opening and closing. I'm no doctor, but it looked to me like little George is a Georgette. Doctor Hoffman pretty much agreed but wouldn't guarantee. The girls seem to be pretty modest even before they're born and this one didn't make it easy to see. At any rate, my wife tells me I better come up with a better name. My apologies to any Georgettes in the audience tonight.

I gazed at that ultrasound screen, and watched in real time, our baby's heart beating, just as it has been beating ever since somewhere between days 18 and 21, which is before most women find out for sure they're pregnant.

And I thought to myself, 40 million tiny beating hearts. How can any sane society tolerate 40 million abortions? Have the people at NARAL, NOW, and Planned Parenthood seen one of these ultrasounds? I'm sure most of them have. All my ``proabortion'' colleagues in the Congress? Do you suppose they've seen one of these? Surely they must have.

Then why does it seem like there's so many more of them and not enough of us?

I'll tell you why. The pro-abortion movement in America has plotted a campaign-style strategy that assumes we are all idiots. They want us to believe women are somehow degraded when caring, compassionate people talk about the Rights of their offspring.

Unfortunately, it seems the first people to buy all that baloney are politicians. Just yesterday, the Rocky Mountain News ran a story about an abortion rally that took place this week on the Statehouse steps in Denver.

One of the people I serve with in Congress was pictured there and quoted saying, ``We can't afford to be complacent.'' According to the News, ``he added he wanted to make sure his 9-year-old daughter would have the same freedom of reproductive choice enjoyed by women today. `Our daughters are counting on us.' '' Well I say, our daughters are indeed counting on us, but not for more abortions.

Well, the first thing we need to do is quit feeling like a minority and start acting like a majority, because we are. We need to stop blaming the media, stop blaming Planned Parenthood, because we know on any given day a strong majority of Americans agree with us. And if we can't convince our neighbors that nothing in our society is more important than human life, then we are simply not trying hard enough.

Our greatest weapon is the truth. Dr. John C. Wilke, who before becoming president of the National Right to Life Committee, was president of the Ohio Right to Life, first impressed this upon me. He came to my high school in Cincinnati. I was proud to march beside him in Washington, D.C. 20 years ago in the annual pro-life march on the nation's capital.

He taught about the fundamental truths that relate to abortion. No matter what your faith, your culture, or even your opinion about abortion rights, there are certain undeniable truths.

Fact: From the moment of conception, this being is alive. It is not dead. In fact, the more science knows about fetal development, the more science has confirmed that the beginning of any one human life, biologically speaking, begins at the union of his father's sperm and his mother's ovum, a process called ``conception.''

Fact: This being is distinctly human with 46 human chromosomes, male or female (not an ``it'') complete, alive, and growing. These live human beings possess the ability to change our lives, change our communities, and to change our world. That's not a condemnation. That's a tribute to human existence, and it is awesome. And since the 1960's we have raised a generation that places less importance upon the awesome responsibility of creating a child. Even in this room, how many of our own children understand this sacred act--a man and woman becoming one in the same flesh, sanctified by God, the result of which is human life?

Oh we might have said the words, and had the discussion with our kids, but look what we're competing against. They're bombarded everywhere they turn with secular messages that promote destruction over life.

It's everywhere, at school, on the internet, on the radio, the TV, it comes in the mail, from the neighborhood. Even my mother, gave my 12 year old twin girls some stupid book about boys as a gift. I had to take it away, but that's a story I don't need to get into. There are even some ministers of the Gospel who will preach that the quality of one's life is of equal or greater concern than life itself. I don't deny that quality is important, but if quality comes first, then we have invented a formula to end world hunger, homelessness, disease and suffering by simply killing all those afflicted. If quality is supreme, then abortion rights activists have invented a doctrine that justifies even the most horrific mass executions throughout the history of human civilization.

Friends, our battle is for the truth. This war will not be won by the Supreme Court. It will not be won in Washington. Yes, there are some battles there to be won or lost but the real contest for the heart must be won in communities like ours all across the country.

Even Jesus Christ Himself said, ``render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and to God what is God's.'' The souls of the children belong to God. Take it from me, the bureaucracy does not care. The bureaucracy cannot love. I was there at that famous National Prayer Breakfast when Mother Teresa lectured the President and the Congress. There is no such thing as an unwanted child she said. If you don't want your child, ``give it to me,'' she said. True to her word, her Sisters of Charity have never turned away an unwanted child.

Fortunately for us the founders understood this. They even understood Deuteronomy, the concept of free will. They built a government upon the belief that Americans should be trusted while acknowledging there would always be treacherous risk that some Americans would make the wrong choices. But total freedom is also the only way for the people to keep their government honest and frankly, the only chance for true honor, integrity, and virtue to exist--the very kind of qualities heaven and earth have been called to record this day against us.

You know, sometimes doing what's right is just hard work. Actually, it usually is easy if you think about it, but sometimes it's very difficult, inconvenient. God knows this.

If we're going to be concerned about whether a child lives, then we also have to be concerned about the rest of her day when she's 2 years old, 6 years old, 9 years old, and so on. That's what crisis pregnancy centers are all about, and that's why we're here tonight. We know that if any child is mislead to believe his life, at any time, didn't matter, or doesn't matter, or might not matter, then we have loosened the ties that all children need to their community, to one another, to their mother, and to God. Abortion dissolves this bond, and without it children will inevitably turn against their parents and other children.

Let me begin to close by bringing us back to what we have failed to communicate to the nation, and where we have failed America in my judgment. We have not had the moral courage to stand up and say that the expense of ignoring the truth is death, misery, human degradation, and the loss of opportunity and dignity for millions of humans.

When people define freedom as an eight-foot bubble on your way to an abortion mill, it trivializes the protective bubble we really ought to be concerned about, which is the womb. What kind of society is it that makes free speech on a public sidewalk a crime, and then dismisses the silent screams of 1.2 million abortions performed this year as matters of privacy?

And I'm sick and tired of the double standard that allows the Clinton administration on one day, to send American soldiers into battle halfway around the globe, because ethnic cleansing is terrible; and then the next day open up the White House to abortion lobbyists. It is their industry that disproportionately preys upon the children of black and Latino mothers, effectively waging a more sinister and more viscous kind of ethnic cleansing right in our own backyard.

When put in that perspective, the people of any country in the world have every right to be as appalled by abortion in America as we are appalled when we see pictures of dead children in the streets of Kosovo. The same people who advocate free needles for heroin addicts, who offer condoms and Depo-Provera to children in Title X clinics behind their parents' backs, who describe ``safe sex'' as anything outside of marriage, and who gleefully tell about the drugs they ``didn't inhale,'' cause people to die.

They're the same ones who have been willing to embrace moral degradation in our schools, and tolerate this pestilent preoccupation with death, and attack the family. These people are just as guilty as the kid who pulls the trigger on his friends.

And for generations we've lacked the nerve and courage to stand up and say, ``I'm not going anywhere until this community is safe for every child!''

This is about our children. It's about human life. Even today, the rest of the world looks to us for security because they've read our Declaration of Independence, and they assume we're serious about it. That's why American troops are deployed to missions all around the planet at this very moment.

And so while our sons and daughters in uniform secure peace and save lives in places like Bosnia, East Timor, Haiti, Kosovo, and Korea, don't you think we owe them the same kind of courage here at home? To show them that what they defend matters? That the truth is for real and it's important?

In 1987 Ted Koppel spoke about truth before the graduating class of Duke University. He explained how ``we have spent five thousand years as a race of rational human beings trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth.''

Now this is Ted Koppel, the guy on Nightline ..... a journalist. He said, ``our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a howling reproach.

``What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the ten suggestions ..... they were Commandments. Are, not were.''

Friends, I've spoken tonight for a long time about three things: free will, the ugly truth about abortion, and moral decay.

As a Catholic, I'm a great admirer of the Holy Father Pope John Paul II. Regardless of whether you're a Catholic, his message about the times we are in is one for us all.

This year, the Jubilee Year 2000, is a special moment. For all Christians it is a year of great anticipation, a millennium measured from that first night in Bethlehem that has come to define our very souls. To this day the Nativity shapes our character as God's people on earth.

This is a year for reconciliation within the Church and throughout our society. It is a year for hope and growth. It is a year to emphasize to the world how a Child changed the course of humanity and how 2000 years later He is still the greatest influence on how we live, and how we understand real freedom and real liberty.

Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in his great 1835 work Democracy in America observed, ``America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.'' The British statesman, Edmund Burke wrote his famous quote in 1795, ``All that is necessary for evil to triumph is good men to do nothing.''

The Jubilee Year is our year to do something good, to do something great, to choose blessing over cursing, to choose life over death. Remember heaven and earth are indeed called to record this day against us. And so I ask you to firmly rely upon the protection of Divine Providence. Pledge your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor, just as the founders did in that last beautiful sentence of the Declaration. See to it that this Republic for which we stand is truly one nation under God, and that we do extend the full benefits of Liberty and Justice to all living human beings, born and unborn. Thank you.

Source: Congressional Record