Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Not yet.

Mr. SANTORUM. If the Senator----

Mr. SANTORUM. This is something that can----

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, reclaiming my time.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Kansas.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to make a couple comments. The Senator from Illinois made his comments, as did the Senator from Maine. They keep focusing on the reason we need a health exception, that the Daschle amendment will do some things, ``We provide for a mother's health as well as provide for taking care of these viable babies.'' I don't know how many times I have to repeat it from how many different sources, but it needs to be repeated again and again and again, and it is being repeated, frankly, without contradiction. These people who I am quoting are people who are involved in maternal fetal medicine. These are people who deal with high-risk pregnancies, pregnancies that are talked about as so important to keep this health option open, that those of us who want to ban partial-birth abortion without a health option, which everyone knows is an open door to do abortion on demand-- the courts have said it is, it is an open door--there is no need for a health option in second- and third-trimester abortions. That is not Rick Santorum saying it. I don't know how many times I have said this. I am not saying this. I will give you another physician who is a specialist in maternal fetal medicine, a perinatologist at the Medical College of Pennsylvania who testified under oath--under oath--in U.S. Federal District Court in the Southern District of Ohio. This is Dr. Harlan Giles, who specializes in high-risk obstetrics and perinatology and also performs abortions. This is not someone who is pro-life. Under oath, a specialist in the field who performs abortions, and here is what he says: After 23 weeks-- This is a 23-week case-- After 23 weeks, I do not think there are any maternal conditions that I'm aware of-- This is 23 weeks, which is what Senator Daschle termed as ``viability''-- . . . I do not think there are any maternal conditions that I'm aware of that mandate ending the pregnancy that also require that the fetus be dead or that the fetal life be terminated. In other words, you do not have to kill the baby, even in viable babies: In my experience for 20 years, one can deliver these fetuses either vaginally, or by cesarean section for that matter, depending on the choice of the parents with informed consent. . . But there's no reason these fetuses cannot be delivered intact vaginally after a miniature labor, if you will, and be at least assessed at birth and given the benefit of the doubt. The Senator from Illinois said, ``You don't care about the health of the woman, you want to take these decisions away.'' It is a decision, unfortunately, of too many doctors in this country and we know this-- one thing I learned in being involved, unfortunately, as I have with health care problems personally with my family is that doctors don't know everything. Not every doctor is up on all the literature, not every doctor knows what is out there. So, unfortunately, a lot of people get a lot of bad advice. Yes, they get a lot of bad advice as to when to abort a baby, far, far, far too often. Maybe it is bad advice because they just don't know or they haven't taken the time to figure it out, or maybe it is because they just don't want to deal with that high-risk pregnancy because that is not their speciality and they would rather just take the easy way out. You don't get sued for performing an abortion, you get that little consent. In fact, most of the consents on abortions waive the right to be sued. So you get that consent and no one is sued for doing abortions wrongfully. But doctors are sued for wrongful birth. Can you believe that? We don't sue people for doing abortions; we sue them for having babies with deformities or abnormalities. Interesting country we live in. But the fact of the matter is that no health exception is necessary under the Daschle proposal, because after viability, if you will, there is no reason to kill the baby to protect the health of the mother. No reason; never, never. I have 400 physicians who sent a letter saying never. I have a doctor who is a perinatologist who performs abortions-- never. I don't know what else we need. We talk so much. I know the Senator from California often said, ``You're not doctors, and we shouldn't be making decisions here because we're not doctors.'' I think the Senator from Michigan was right. We are not nuclear scientists, but we make decisions on nuclear energy, and we are not generals, but we make decisions on defense. That is our job. It may not be that we are the best qualified in all cases to make decisions, but that is what we are here to do, and we do it. I can tell you the Senator from California is not shy about telling other people how to live their lives in a whole lot of other areas. So I just suggest that what we are talking about are the experts telling us to stop the tragedy, and what we have done with the partial-birth abortion ban is to stop the tragedy. What the Daschle bill does is continue the status quo. It does nothing to stop. You have seen this picture. Donna Joy Watts. Every doctor who looked at Donna Joy Watts in utero said she was not viable. The Daschle amendment would not have stopped doctors, and there were many of them who wanted to abort Donna Joy Watts. This is a little girl who was born to Joe and Sandra Mallon who live in Upper Darby, PA. This is Kathleen. Kathleen had the same condition, hydrocephalus. She would not be viable, she would not be protected from abortion under the Daschle amendment. The list goes on and on and on. The fact of the matter is, there is a loophole in this amendment that nullifies the whole good intent that everyone is going around talking about. This does nothing. What it does is provide political cover for those who do not want to vote for a partial-birth abortion ban. Even if you believe the Daschle amendment does what he says it does, even if you believe that it bans ``postviability abortions,'' most partial-birth abortions are done at 20 to 24 weeks, which is just at the edge of viability. So most partial-birth abortions would, undoubtedly, continue to be legal under the Daschle amendment. I suggest that we stick to what we know are the facts. We know the fact is that the partial-birth abortion procedure is a brutal, barbaric procedure that should not be legal in our country. We should abolish it. We have the opportunity to do that. If the Senator from South Dakota, and the other Members who are part of his team, want to work on further restricting abortions, count me in, but this amendment does not do that.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator.

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield to the Senator from Tennessee, the only physician in the Senate.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield 6 minutes to the Senator from Ohio.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, the Finance Committee Subcommittee on International Trade requests unanimous consent to conduct a hearing on Thursday, May 15, 1997, beginning at 2 p.m. in room 215 Dirksen.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, as I spoke last night, we are now moving to consideration of the partial-birth abortion ban that has passed the House of Representatives with a constitutional majority, more than two- thirds I should say, more than two-thirds majority in the House, which means, if there is a Presidential veto, we would be able to override it in the House. It now comes to the Senate where we have an assured majority of the votes to be able to pass this legislation. The question really is whether we are going to have 67 votes necessary to do it. So we commence the debate today. I am hopeful, now that this bill has 42 cosponsors, we will have a spirited debate with many people participating, adding their thoughts on this subject. I have a unanimous-consent request first. I ask unanimous consent that Donna Joy Watts be allowed access to the Senate gallery. This is an exception to the Senate regulations governing access to the gallery because Ms. Watts is not yet 6 years of age.

Mr. SANTORUM. We have coarsened the comity of this place to the point where someone sitting in the gallery, who is literally months away from the age that has been set by the Senate rules, who has a particular interest in this piece of legislation would not be accorded the decency of being able to at least observe. But I respect the Senator's right to do what she wants to do, and she certainly is within her rights to do it. I think it is unfortunate that a young girl who has had as close to a personal encounter with this issue as possible and still be here to talk about it is not able to listen to a procedure to protect others from what she was threatened with. And that is certainly within the discretion of the Senator from California. I will proceed with my opening statement.

Mr. SANTORUM. If I can, I find myself almost incredulous, to believe that you are--in arguing, as I know you have in the past, and other Members have, that we have no right here in the U.S. Senate to dictate what other parents should be able to do with their children with respect to whether they should be able to abort them or not. But when a mother seeks to share with her daughter, mother and father, share with her daughter some information that is important to her in a very profound way and that you are going to stand up, as a Member of the U.S. Senate, and suggest that you know what is better for her daughter than she does, I think is rather troubling. But again, it is your right as a Senator to object to these things. I respect that right. I just don't happen to agree with the characterization that allowing their daughter the opportunity to witness something that is very important to all of their lives is in any way exploiting her. But that is--your objection is so noted. Mr. President, I think it is important as we start this debate that we understand what we are debating, that is partial-birth abortion. So I am going to explain what a partial-birth abortion is, when it is used, who it is used on, and why it is used. There has been a lot of talk about this procedure and the facts around the procedure. We have seen in recent months how some of the facts in fact did not turn out to be facts, particularly things that were used and said by Members here on this Senate floor as to what partial-birth abortion was all about, when it was used, who it was used on, why it was used. So this debate unfortunately a year ago was shrouded in a cloak of inaccuracies. In this debate, as much as many of us tried to articulate what we knew to be the facts, we were countered with arguments that in fact have turned out not to be true. So I am hopeful that with this new information having been brought to light, that the facts as we now know them--and I cannot attest, because some of the facts have been provided by the abortion industry themselves, who are opposed to this bill, so I cannot verify the information we have been given is in fact accurate. All I can verify is that they have admitted to at least this. But what we do know is that those set of facts that they now admit to are different than what they were saying before, and different in a material enough way that Members who relied on that information last time, if they rely on the different set of facts this time, can come to a different conclusion. That happened in the House of Representatives. Several Members who voted against the partial-birth abortion ban based on a set of facts as they knew them provided by the abortion industry, when those facts were shown to be inaccurate, changed their position in light of those, that new information, and supported the legislation and supported it to such a degree that it passed with over 290 votes, which is the necessary vote to override the Presidential veto. So, let us look at what partial-birth abortion is. By the way, the drawings that I am going to use are drawings that were copied--derived from drawings that Dr. Haskell, who was the inventor of this procedure, had. Dr. Haskell, by the way, is not an obstetrician and gynecologist-- people whose business it is to deliver babies. Dr. Haskell is a family practitioner who does abortions, and he invented this procedure. This procedure is not in any medical textbook. This procedure is not taught in any medical school. This procedure has not been peer reviewed. In other words, no other doctors have looked at this to see whether this is safe and healthy and a proper procedure. It has not been recognized as a legitimate procedure. But he has invented this thing, this monstrosity, and he wrote a paper on it. From the description and from the pictures in that paper we reproduced this, these drawings. Dr. Haskell, when asked about these particular drawings, the ones you are going to see, said they were accurate, from a technical point of view. So any comments that these drawings are somewhat of a fabrication or whatever does not hold water. I also suggest when you see the drawings of the baby in these pictures, the drawing of the baby in these pictures is a drawing of a 20-24 week gestation baby. It is not a big baby or has not been blown up to look like it is more life size than it is. It is the exact size. If you look at the size of the baby relative to the size of the doctors' hands, which is the way you can judge size, you can see a baby at that gestation which is when most of the partial-birth abortions are performed. In fact, it is at the low end of when they are performed because they are performed in the fifth and sixth month, and this is fifth month. So, it is the small end of when these abortions are performed. This is a 3-day procedure. You are going to hear about life of the mother, health of the mother, we need to do some things to protect the life and health of the mother. This is a 3-day procedure. The mother is given drugs the first 2 days to dilate her cervix, to open her womb so the doctor can then reach in as you see here to grab the baby. I would just ask this question, and you don't have to be a doctor to answer it. If a woman presents herself to a physician in a life-threatening situation, would anyone do a 3-day procedure? Second, if the woman presented herself in a health-threatening situation, would any doctor do a procedure that says: Take these pills, come back tomorrow; take these pills that are going to dilate your cervix, open your womb up to infection, which is in fact a risk, and call back? So, when you hear these, ``we have to keep this legal because there may be some circumstance,'' let me assure you--and I will have a quote that I will share with you--there is never a case, there is never a case where this procedure has to be performed to protect the life or health of the mother. Period. Having said that, the bill still provides for a life-of-the-mother exception. So I would just want Members to understand that this procedure is a 3-day procedure. It is done on an outpatient basis. When the mother presents herself in the third day-- and this was the reason Dr. Haskell developed this, was so he could bring her in, the dilation of the cervix would be done, and simply he would perform the procedure. He wouldn't have to wait and have her in the clinic and do these other procedures which are done in 1 day. So this is done for the convenience of the doctor, the abortionist, not for the health of the mother, not for the safety of the baby or anybody else, because you are going to kill the baby. Now you understand why it is done. Guided by an ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby with forceps by the feet or leg. Babies at this time, generally they move around, but they are generally in a head-down position. So the doctor has to reach around, grab the baby by the foot, turn the baby around inside the womb, inside the amniotic sack. Second, they then grab the baby's leg and pull it breach. For those of you who are not physicians--I think there is only one physician in the Senate, the Senator from Tennessee--a breach birth, as any mother or parents know, is a very dangerous occurrence, when a child is delivered breach. To deliberately turn a baby and deliver the baby breach is a risk unto itself. But they deliberately turn this baby and then they pull the baby by the leg out of the uterus, out through the cervix to where the baby is delivered, the entire body except for the head. So you have a baby, now, that is outside the uterus with the exception of the head and, as nurse Brenda Shafer said when she witnessed this procedure, the baby's arms and legs were moving. You might ask, why are they doing this? Why are they delivering this baby in this fashion? Why do they not just take the baby that is head down and just deliver the baby head first and then do what I am going to describe next to the baby? Why don't they do that? The reason they don't deliver the baby out and kill the baby is because once the head exits the mother, it is considered a live birth and has protection. So, if you delivered it in a normal fashion and the baby's head were out and the rest of the body were in, you couldn't kill the baby. The only reason you do this is so it is easier to kill the baby and it is then legal to kill the baby--at least it is if we do not pass this law. So just understand the difference here is a matter of which end comes out first. If the head came out first you can't touch that baby. It is a live birth, protected under the Constitution. Unfortunately, its feet are not protected by the Constitution nor its leg nor its trunk--just its head. At least that is what the courts have said. So now we have this little baby that is outside the mother and a doctor takes some scissors and jams it right here, right in the back of the base of the skull, that soft baby's skull. You know, those of you who have children, how soft that skill is. And they thrust the scissors into the base of the skull. Nurse Brenda Shafer described what the baby did in the partial-birth abortion that she saw. She said the baby's arms and legs flew out, like when you are holding a baby and you drop it and it goes like this. It just doesn't know what to do, it just sort of shoots its legs out, that nervous--nerve reaction. She said it shot its legs out, its arms and leg--for those who believe that the baby doesn't feel anything. And then they went limp. To finish the procedure the doctor takes a suction tube, a high- pressure suction catheter, inserts it in the baby's skull, and suctions the brains out of the baby. That causes the head to collapse, and then the baby is delivered. This is what we are trying to ban. Nothing else; nothing else. This is what we are trying to ban. I cannot help but think, as I look around and see the statues of the Vice Presidents of the United States that ring the Senate Chamber, that if we had been on the Senate floor 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago and talked about this as something that was legal in America, we would have had 100 percent of the U.S. Senate saying, ``Why is this bill even here? This is obviously something that is so barbaric that we cannot allow to have happen.'' But, unfortunately, we have reached the point in our country where this is defensible. This is defensible, treating a little baby like this, a fully formed little baby, not a blob of protoplasm, not a tissue that many would like to believe, this is a baby fully formed, and in many cases viable, that we treat like this, that we murder like this. Let's call it what it is. And we are saying in this country, it's OK. Now, if we did this procedure, if you would take these graphics out and leave some of the definitions out there, if we did this procedure of jamming scissors in the base of the skull and suctioning out the brains on someone who had raped and murdered 30 people, the Supreme Court and every Member of this Senate would say, ``You can't do that, you can't do that, that's cruel and inhumane punishment.'' Oh, but if you are a little baby, if you haven't hurt anybody, if you are nestled up in your mother's womb, warm and safe--supposedly safe--we can do that to you. In fact, it is our right, it is my right that I can do that. The thing about this debate that is probably the most important thing--and you will hear rights, you will hear rights, my right to do this, my right to do that, it's my body, I can do whatever I want, I can kill this baby, it's my baby. Rights. Well, in this case, we are having an abortion debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate where you cannot miss the other side of this debate. You cannot miss the baby in a partial-birth abortion. It is not hidden from view anymore. It is not the dirty little secret we tell ourselves to survive, to live with ourselves that we allow this kind of murder to occur in this country. We cannot hide anymore from the truth of what is happening out there. We cannot lie to ourselves that this is not what we are doing. In fact, Ron Fitzsimmons said, the person who blew the whistle on the abortion industry, we have to face up to the fact that abortion is killing a living being. Let's face up to it. If you want to defend it, defend it, but defend it on what it is: It is killing a little baby who hasn't hurt anybody, who just wants a chance like all of us to live. One of the great ironies that struck me as I walked on the floor today--I walked on the floor and I passed the Senator from Vermont, the Senator from Tennessee, and the Senator from Iowa, who had been so instrumental in the bill that we just passed on the Senate floor. Do you know what bill we just passed on the Senate floor? The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Individuals with disabilities. The principal reason that the people who oppose this ban use for defending this procedure is, You know, a lot of these children have deformities. They might have Down's syndrome or they might not have any arms or legs or they might not even live long, they might have hydrocephaly, they might have all these maladies. And that, of course, is a good reason to kill them. That is the argument. That was the argument that was made over and over and over again, that fetal abnormality is a good reason --in fact, the courts, unfortunately, have legitimized this reason saying it is a legitimate reason to do a third- trimester abortion. I just found it absolutely chilling that a Member could stand up here and rightfully, passionately argue that children are all God's children and perfect in his eyes, and while they may not be perfect, they deserve the dignity of being given the opportunity to maximize their human potential. That is what IDEA is all about, the ability to protect their civil rights to maximize their human potential--except to be born in the first place. Because some of the most passionate defenders of IDEA, some of the most passionate defenders of ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, say it is OK to kill a baby because it is not perfect, any time in a pregnancy--any time in a pregnancy--by using this, the most barbaric of measures. We are going to educate you if you make it, if you survive this. If you survive, if you are lucky enough that your mother loves you enough to give you a chance at life, then we will protect you, but you are on your own until then; you are on your own; we're not going to protect you. You don't deserve protection. Abraham Lincoln, quoting Scripture, said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. I just ask every Member who proudly stands and supports the disabled among us how you can then stand and allow this to happen to those very same children and say that you care? The ultimate compassion here is at least giving them a chance to live. I guarantee you that if you gave a lot of disabled people the choice of whether they would rather be educated or live, it is a pretty easy call. But somehow or another, that is lost here. Well, it is not lost on me, and I don't think it is lost on the American public. You cannot legitimately argue both ways. So this is the debate. You will hear a lot about health exceptions--and I want to address that issue right up front--that we need this procedure to be legal because there might be instances in which the life and health of a mother are in danger and this procedure would have to be done. I am going to put a quote up from a group of close to 500 physicians, almost all of whom are obstetricians, people in the field: While it may become necessary-- This is a quote from a letter-- While it may become necessary, in the second or third trimester, to end a pregnancy in order to protect the mother's life or health, abortion is never required. I want to repeat that: . . . abortion is never required--i.e., it is never medically necessary, in order to preserve a woman's life, health or future fertility, to deliberately kill an unborn child in the second or third trimester, and certainly not by mostly delivering the child before putting him or her to death. What is required-- And this is important-- What is required in the circumstances specified by Senator Daschle is separation of the child from the mother, not the death of the child. What do they mean by that? Sometimes you might have to induce and deliver the baby. Sometimes you may have to do a cesarean section to deliver the baby. But you never have to kill the baby in order to protect the mother's life. You can at least give the baby a chance. Give him or her a chance. If it is not viable, then he will not live or she will not live very long, but you have at least dignified one of our human beings, one of us, your son, your daughter. I just suggest to any mother or father that if you found out that your child was going to die, had a particular virulent form of cancer and the child was 5 years old and the child, according to the doctors, would almost certainly not live more than a few weeks, would you, would any parent in America say, ``Well, my child's going to die, I might as well kill them now''? Would any parent deliberately kill their child because they may not live long? Or, worse yet, would they kill their child because they were in a car accident and lost a leg? Or were in a car accident and are going to be in a wheelchair the rest of their lives and maybe has brain damage and does not have a whole lot of mental capacity, but some, or even none, would you deliberately kill your child? And in doing so, would you do the procedure that I suggested? Would you puncture their skull and suck their brains out? Would you do that? Well, if you would not do that for a 5-year-old son or daughter, why would you do it to a 5-month-old son or daughter? Why? You don't have to. If there is any message, whether this bill passes or not--I say passes, becomes law--that is so important, but it is so important for people to understand that you don't have to kill the baby. You don't have to do that. I know. There is always a more dignified way to treat another human being than to deliberately kill them. So the debate will rage on this afternoon, but just remember these facts--facts: Partial-birth abortion is never necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. Fact: It is never medically indicated. It is not an accepted procedure. It is rare, according to the abortion industry. It is only 3,000 to 5,000 a year, as if that's OK, only killing 3,000 to 5,000 children a year and that is not very many. I guess against 1.4 million or so, it is not many, but can you imagine what we would do in the U.S. Senate if we knew 3,000 children were going to die this year and we could stop it? What lengths would we go? What lengths would we go for 1,000? What lengths would we go for one? I don't know anymore. I wonder whether we can muster up the moral courage to stand up to the powerful lobbies out there and do the right thing. This procedure does not have to be there for any reason--no reason other than for the convenience of the doctor doing the abortion. This procedure is not done at major medical facilities. This procedure is done at abortion clinics, period, and, in most cases, not even by--at least the people who developed it were not even obstetricians. So I hope that we can have a debate on the facts. Because on the facts, if you look at the facts, there is no reason for this procedure to be legal--none. And if you look at the heart, what kind of message are we sending out to the young people all over the country? You know, we have debates here on the floor, and we have committee meetings even to talk about juvenile crime, talk about generation X and how they have no respect for our institutions or even each other, that they think everybody is in it for themselves. The cynicism is so rampant. If you want to know why that occurs, tune in to this debate. Children are not oblivious to what is going on in this country when it comes to the issue of abortion. Ask why a child should be any more concerned about shooting their neighbor if Members of the U.S. Senate and the President of the United States says we can kill a little baby. What is the difference? There is no difference. We are going to have all sorts of problems with this future generation. I hear all the time, ``Oh, they have no values. They don't have any direction. They don't have any purpose. They are so self-centered.'' Gee, I wonder why. What is more self-centered than what I have just described? We are sending a message. A message is being received. And 1.5 million abortions is a very loud message to everybody in our country, particularly the young, the impressionable. And we wonder why, we wonder what the problem is. We can begin to send a positive message today. We can begin to say, you know, there are rights and wrongs--not just rights--rights and wrongs. And this is wrong. I yield the floor. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. She is very interested in this subject. I will discuss her case, and she would like to hear the debate.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, first let me congratulate the Senator from Wyoming for that very touching story about his daughter. I congratulate him for his courage in standing up for her and fighting for her and his willingness to share that with us and his support of this legislation. I also would like to thank the junior Senator from Colorado, Senator Allard, for his excellent statement in support of this measure. I want to cite specifically the senior Senator from Colorado, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Last year I very vividly remember receiving a call from Senator Coats about Ben sitting in a hospital room in Colorado, watching the debate and talking to doctors and seeing so many people do so much to save life, and his incredibly insightful comments about how he could watch through his door efforts to save life and then look up on the television screen and see C-SPAN and see people who wanted to extinguish life. That conflicted him and disturbed him. It is a very hard thing, it is a very hard thing in politics for someone on the abortion issue to walk out of a camp. This issue is a very polarized issue. You are in one camp or the other. You are pro- life or you are pro-choice and you don't waffle. You don't walk down the middle of this one or you get run over. It takes a lot of courage to walk out of that camp because you know they are wrong. A lot of folks are struggling with this issue today. They are fighting themselves in looking at this issue. They don't feel comfortable being in this camp against this bill. But it takes courage to step out and do the right thing for you, do the right thing according to your conscience, the right thing according to what you believe is best for America. It has political risks, tremendous political risks. You alienate your friends, you open yourself up to attack. But I think it just shows a tremendous amount of courage and commitment to your principles, to stand up to your friends. It is easy to stand up to your opponents. We do that all the time. But when you stand up and face the people that you have supported on issue after issue and say, ``This time you are wrong,'' do you know how hard that is? You know in your own lives, anybody listening here knows how difficult it is to talk to a friend and say, ``You know, I have been with you,'' and just say, on something they care about, they deeply care about, ``You are wrong and I cannot be with you.'' It is great courage, the courage of convictions. I applaud him for doing that in a very dramatic and sensitive way. Finally, I thank the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Frist, the only physician in the Senate who articulated, not just from a medical point of view but from a moral point of view, why this ban is absolutely necessary and why this procedure is absolutely unnecessary for any reason to be performed on anyone. So, we have just begun this debate. Unfortunately, as soon as some other Senators come down here to start the next--I see the Senator from North Carolina is here. I will move on. We will have to break off the debate for a short period of time. I hope we will have more time to debate later this evening, and then, pursuant to this unanimous consent that I will read, we will move tomorrow at 11 o'clock to reconsideration of this bill, bringing this bill back up for consideration, and debate the Boxer amendment. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Thursday be equally divided for debate regarding the Feinstein amendment to H.R. 1122, that no amendment be in order to the Feinstein amendment, and, further, at the hour of 2 p.m., the Senate proceed to a vote on or in relation to the Feinstein amendment.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I do not think we are off to a very good start on this debate. I was hopeful that the Senator from California would continue to try to assure the comity that is usually accorded Members when it comes to these kinds of situations. I know that that unfortunate incident occurred a few weeks ago with a unanimous-consent request. I would hate to see that this kind of occurrence becomes a normal course.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Caucus on International Narcotics Control be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 14, starting at 9:30 a.m. in room G-50 of the Dirksen Office Building. The caucus will be receiving testimony on the threat to and effects of corruption on U.S. law enforcement personnel along the Southwest border.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Oceans and Fisheries Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Wednesday, May 14, 1997, at 2:30 p.m. on S. 39--International Dolphin Conservation Program Act.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 14, 1997, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 14, 1997, beginning at 9:30 a.m. until business is completed, to receive testimony on the Campaign Finance System for Presidential Elections: The Growth of Soft Money and Other Effects on Political Parties and Candidates.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be granted permission to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 14, for purposes of conducting a full committee business meeting which is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. The purpose of this business meeting is to consider pending calendar business.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, in executive session I ask unanimous- consent the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Executive Calendar No. 2, the Treaty Doc. No. 105-5, the CFE Treaty.