Chris Smith

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) control the remainder of the time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, recently a new organization formed in the United States called the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. It is made up entirely of women who have had abortions. One of the women, Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, has had two abortions. She is now one of the most passionate spokeswomen on earth in favor of the unborn child and in favor of protecting women from abortion and assisting women harmed and wounded by abortion. She has pointed out that women in America, and increasingly in the world in countries where it has been legalized, become the walking wounded and carry with them the deep emotional and physical scars of having had an abortion under the cheap sophistry choice. Dr. King used to be on the other side of the issue and she, like the other women in Silent No More, are now adamantly pro-life. Dr. King and so many others call on us today to defend life and not export abortion. The Appropritions bill on the floor today provides $441 million for overseas family planning. That is in the bill. It's untouched by the Smith-Stupak amendment. But who we give grant money or inkind donations to matters. When you pour in-kind contributions into pro-abortion organizations whose raison d'etre, and just read their literature and Web sites and look at what they're doing in those countries, is to legalize abortion on demand and to promote abortion by way of clinics, you realize that a vote against the Smith-Stupak amendment is a vote to enable abortion on demand. Abortion is child abuse. That may not be something nice to say on this floor, some of you may cringe over it because you think it's all about choice. Choice to do what? Dismember, chemically poison a child. These are children. Welcome to 2007. Ultrasound technology has shattered the myth that an unborn child is not human or not alive. Birth is an event that happens to each and every one of us. It's not the beginning of life. Prenatal surgery has shattered myths concerning the unborn as well. Unborn children are patients. So let's give the money to the family planners overseas that are all about family planning, not abortion promotion.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Florida, Dr. Dave Weldon.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds just to say that the previous speaker's comments missed by a mile what this is all about. The Mexico City policy does not apply to a single country. It applies to organizations. Countries are expressly excluded from Mexico City policy. It is all about pro-abortion organizations, and whether or not we want to enrich and enable them to expand abortion. We want to put our money and in-kind contributions to those that have divested themselves from the killing of unborn children. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, someday future generations of Americans will look back on us and wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with the capacity to protect and enhance vulnerable human life, could have instead so aggressively promoted death to children by abortion. They will note that we prided ourselves on our human rights rhetoric and record, while precluding unusually all protection to the most persecuted minority in the world today, unborn children. They will indeed wonder why it took so long to stop just one hideous method of death, partial-birth abortion--and why dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing a child with powerful suction devices or chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals, failed to elicit so much as a scintilla of empathy, mercy or compassion for the victims. Abortion is violence against children, Mr. Chairman. It is extreme child abuse. It is cruelty to children. It exploits women. In America, it has destroyed 49 million unborn babies and wounded countless numbers of women. Now, as in previous years, some Members of Congress want to export the violence of abortion to Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia and Europe by reversing the prolife Mexico City policy and by providing in- kind assistance to some of the most vociferous pro-abortion organizations on the Earth. To counter that, Mr. Stupak and I are offering an amendment, to strike the pro-abortion enabling language contained in this bill. First announced by the Reagan administration at a 1984 U.N. Population Conference held in Mexico City, hence its name, the current policy simply requires that foreign nongovernmental organizations agree, as a condition of their receipt of Federal assistance for family-planning activities, to neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning. The three exceptions in the Mexico City policy are rape, incest and life of the mother. Mr. Chairman, today, scores of countries throughout the world are literally under siege in a well-coordinated, exceedingly well-funded campaign to legalize abortion on demand, putting women and children at risk. Most of the pressure is coming directly from foreign nongovernmental organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation based in London. IPPF and its country affiliates perform abortions and lobby aggressively for abortion on demand. IPPF, you will recall, in 1992 adopted an abortion manifesto called Vision 2000, a sweeping ``action plan.'' Vision 2000 says that IPPF and its affiliates, and I quote this, ``Will bring pressure on governments and campaign for policy and legislative changes to remove restrictions against abortions.'' The Mexico City policy puts a stop to enabling IPPF and likeminded groups from doing just that. So it couldn't be more clear, Mr. Chairman, that if we provide either cash or in-kind contributions to abortion organizations, we empower them and we enable them to campaign to expand abortion. Instead, we should direct our funds and in-kind assistance, including commodities and contraceptives, to organizations committed only to family planning. IPPF's vision, Mr. Chairman, is what I call a nightmare. Earlier my friend, Mr. Jackson, was talking about the least of our brethren in found Matthew is Gospel, Chapter 25. Who in this world fits the definition of the least of our brethren more than a helpless unborn child who is being killed by dismemberment or chemical poison? I don't know who. Unborn babies are the most vulnerable people on Earth, I say to my good friend. IPPF's vision is a world of free abortion and unfettered access to subsidized abortion rights right up until birth. It is all in their documents. They're for abortions for minors even without any parental notification or consent, and they don't like conscience clauses for doctors and health care practitioners, either. One only has to look at Planned Parenthood here in the United States to understand where their affiliates would take the rest of the world. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has, for example, colocated family planning clinics with abortion mills. They annually perform 265,000 abortions every year in America, a quarter of all the abortions in our country a staggering loss of children's lives. One organization. They lobby and litigate to stop women's right-to-know laws and parental consent laws. They lobby in favor of partial birth abortion. If that is not child abuse, I don't know what is. Make no mistake about it, Mr. Chairman, that is what they want to do everywhere. We kid ourselves if we don't realize that and appreciate that. The Mexico City policy, on the other hand, separates abortion from family planning in certain foreign aid programs. It ensures that family planning is the exclusive activity of the organization and not abortion. If we provide other cash or in-kind contributions or anything of value, we again empower, we enrich and we enable these organizations. It is all about whom we give to. Finally, I would like to say with deep respect to my prolife colleagues, especially on the Democratic side of the aisle, some of whom are under intense pressure to support the other side and to oppose Mr. Stupak and me, if protecting babies and women from abortion matters to you, and I mean really, really matters to you, there is no way that any of us could work to overturn the Mexico City policy. This is the time to stand for the innocent and the inconvenient ones who can't speak for themselves. I would remind my colleagues again that nothing in our language today cuts by a penny the money that is allocated in this appropriations bill for family planning. If you look, and we will do this again later, at one country after another, we have seen doubling and tripling, quadrupling even, of money going to countries, especially in Africa, for family planning under the Mexico City policy. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), the coauthor of this amendment.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Tennessee.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. First of all, we are not punishing. We are saying that, as a matter of human rights principle, that the killing of an unborn child rises to a sufficient level that we will pick other NGOs to whom we will give our dollars.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my good friend for yielding. Mr. Chairman, the Lowey amendment reiterates the unambiguous intention of the underlying language in the bill that Mr. Stupak and I will seek to strike later on, that, if enacted, provides in-kind U.S. taxpayer assistance to pro-abortion organizations around the world. That's what's happening here, nothing more and nothing less. Prolife Members, especially some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, know and fully understand that in-kind contributions are of no less value than money. In-kind or cash, it is a distinction without a difference. The intended recipients of the Lowey amendment are precisely those pro- abortion organizations that have refused to divest themselves of abortion and agree to the Mexico City provisions. The Mexico City policy, separates family planning from abortion. The Mexico City policy helps to ensure that foreign nongovernment organizations that want U.S. grants, be they in the form of cash or in-kind commodities contraceptives, only engage themselves in family planning, as advertised. It stands to reason, if we support pro-abortion organizations, unborn children and their mothers, and the laws that today protect them, will be put into jeopardy; and the violence of abortion will increase and not be diminished. Let me just note that neither the Mexico City policy, nor the amendment that Mr. Stupak and I will offer today, reduces family planning by so much as a penny. It simply strikes the language in the bill that carves out an exception to the Mexico City policy for who? The pro-abortion organizations. As a matter of fact, since the restoration of the Mexico City policy, several countries, including Ethiopia, DR Congo, Nigeria, Uganda, Haiti, Pakistan, have gotten huge increases in contraceptives and family planning assistance. Ethiopia, for example, went from $4.9 million to $19.5 million in 2007 under the Mexico City policy, almost a 300 percent increase. Congo went from $1 million to $9 million. Pakistan for 1.4 to 16.5. U.S. funding to Nigeria and Uganda doubled while Haiti tripled. USAID has made it clear that it targets what its analysts say is unmet need. Even Ghana has seen its average annual contraception shipment rise, from $1.5 million in calendar years 1998-2001 to $2.3 million for calendar years 2002-2003. Under the Mexico City policy, the U.S. has remained the largest donor nation by far to international family planning. We just insist and direct that those funds are used in a way and go to the groups that are about family planning and are not double hatted, trying to enable abortionists and abortion lobbyists overseas. I would point out, as Mrs. Lowey stated earlier when she talked about lobbying, the Mexico City policy, I have a copy for anybody to read, makes it very clear that when it comes to lobbying, we are only talking about lobbying for abortion as a method for birth control. Exempted explicitly, unlike what she said earlier, are rape, incest and life-of- the-mother provision. I hope she will correct the record. It is clearly false.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. USAID has done, I think, a remarkable job in focusing on unmet needs, not just in the area of family planning, but child survival, microcredit lending and a whole host of other very important interventions that help poor people. It's all about prioritization. I showed you earlier one country after another that has had a doubling and a tripling of their money and commodities and contraceptives since the Mexico City policy was reinstated in 2001. It's all about prioritization. Let me also say, because Ghana was mentioned earlier today, just because Planned Parenthood of Ghana is so obsessed with abortion promotion that it won't sign the policy, other NGOs and other providers have stepped into the breach and provide family planning and abortions to the people of Ghana.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Pitts amendment. As an original cosponsor of the President's $15 billion, 5-year law to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa, I rise in strong opposition to the language in the bill that undermines and dismisses the successful HIV/ AIDS prevention spending requirement in the PEPFAR legislation. Where the epidemic has spread among the general population, the only successful evidence-based approach to HIV/AIDS prevention is that which emphasizes abstinence before marriage and faithfulness in relationships, and, lastly, where necessary, condoms. The success of the ABC approach depends on the proper balance between these three elements. The spending requirement is necessary to attain that balance. The vast majority of PEPFAR's focus countries have generalized epidemics; and those that have emphasized A and B, abstinence and being faithful programming, have experienced significant increases in the number of youth and adults who are either abstaining or being mutually faithful, and, at the same time, they have seen significant drops in those countries, in the percentage of their population infected with HIV/AIDS. Examples of countries that have aggressively promoted abstinence and fidelity at the national level, backed by real resources, and have experienced decreased HIV rates include Uganda, Senegal, Jamaica, Thailand, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Dominican Republic and Kenya. On the other hand, no country with a generalized epidemic that has relied primarily on condom promotion has reported a decline in HIV rates. Southern Africa is a tragic example of this. The Washington Post on March 2 pointed out that ``researchers increasingly attribute the resilience of HIV in Botswana, and in Southern Africa generally, to the high incidence of multiple sexual relationships . . . [Western AIDS experts] brought not just ideas, but money, and soon billboards in Botswana touted condoms. Schoolchildren sang about them. Cadres of young women demonstrated how to roll them out. The anti-AIDS partnership between the . . . Gates Foundation and drugmaker Merck budgeted $13.5 million for condom promotion, 25 times the amount dedicated to curbing dangerous sexual behavior. But soaring rates of condom use,'' The Washington Post went on, ``have not brought down high HIV rates. Instead, they rose together until both were among the highest in Africa.'' As indicated in The Washington Post report, those who are considered AIDS experts in the West, including some of those who directed U.S. prevention funding prior to PEPFAR, imposed their narrow-minded condom promotion mentality on Africa. The PEPFAR coordinator, on the other hand, Ambassador Mark Dybul, testified last fall that the 33 percent prevention spending requirement ``has helped support PEPFAR's field personnel in appropriately broadening the range of prevention efforts . . . In addition, the directive has helped PEPFAR to align itself with the strategies of the host nations, of which ABC is a key element.'' In a letter to the editor of Lancet, June 2006, the Minister of Health of Namibia noted that PEPFAR support for AB, abstinence and faithful, is needed to ensure the balance of the ABC programs that Namibia seeks. That is because, he goes on to say, other international donors support only condoms but not abstinence or being faithful programs. Finally, let me say that even with the spending requirement, the United States remains by far the largest condom distributor in the world. If our goal here is to save lives by implementing the strongest evidence-based prevention programs possible, we should be at least maintaining, and I would suggest increasing, the percentage of funding directed to abstinence and to being faithful programs. It works, it has proven that it works, and I support the Pitts amendment.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding, and I want to thank Ambassador Watson for being one of the cosponsors of this resolution, as well as all of those who join us today in making this collective statement to the Russians that there needs to be significant change, a reform, as to how they treat journalists. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in strong support of H. Con. Res. 151, a resolution which calls upon Russian President Putin to seek outside law enforcement assistance in investigating the unsolved murders of dozens of Russian journalists over the past decade. We also encourage President Bush to formally offer President Putin law enforcement assistance from the United States. Most observers think, Mr. Speaker, that some Russian officials have ordered or at least connived at these murders since most of the murdered journalists were investigating government corruption or involvement in human rights abuses. There is good reason to think that people in high places are still protecting the murderers. Mr. Speaker, Russia holds the second worst position in the world in the number of journalists killed in the last 10 years, according to the International News Safety Institute. Reporters Without Borders counts 21 murdered journalists since March of 2000. This is a conservative number. It does not include the death under extremely suspicious circumstances of Ivan Safronov. It does include the murders of Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya. Mr. Speaker, any Member can do this, do a Google search, put in Russian journalists and murders, and you come up with one headline after another and one news story after another, usually in the Western press, of individuals being killed. On June 15, there was a headline, ``Russian Journalist Attacked in Moscow''; May of 2005, ``Radio Journalist Badly Beaten Up''; April 21, ``Russian Reporters Get Beaten Despite Wearing Special Jackets''; April 20, ``Russian Activists Skeptical About Special Clothing For Journalists At Protests,'' they've got to wear special clothing, protective gear, to protect them from the police; April 9, ``Television Journalist Found Dead''; April 9, again, ``Critical Television Journalist Fears For His Life''; ``Photo Journalist Beaten, Injured'', on April 5; ``Journalist Assaulted During Demonstration''; and the list goes on and on and on. Sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I see a pattern, and I think other Members do as well. Let me just say a brief word about the three journalists that all three of us are mentioning today, also delineated in the resolution, whose deaths are sadly illustrative of so many others. Paul Klebnikov was the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes Magazine. In July 2004, he was shot to death in Moscow while investigating suspect business dealings and corruption cases. Anna Politkovskaya was an award-winning Russian journalist and human rights activist. She wrote many articles criticizing Russian atrocities committed during the war in Chechnya. In October 2006, she was shot to death in Moscow. Ivan Savronov reported for the Russian newspaper, Kommersant. He wrote articles criticizing the failure of Russian military programs and was planning to report on potential Russian arms sales to Iran and Syria, state sponsors of terrorism. In March of 2007, he died under suspicious circumstances, as has been recounted by both of my colleagues. He fell five stories from a window in the stairwell of his Moscow apartment building. That was no accident, Mr. Speaker. That was a murder. None of these cases have been solved, and very few of the less famous cases have been even looked at in a meaningful way. Many of my colleagues in this House have other concerns about human rights problems in Russia. Xenophobic violence continues throughout the Russian Federation. People continue to disappear in Chechnya. Local officials still discriminate against non-Orthodox religion, and the rule of just law remains shaky. Of course we all care about these. But I would point out to you that a situation in which journalists can be killed with impunity is a human rights problem of a different order. It is a human rights problem that mitigates the resolution of other human rights problems. When journalists investigating a corruption case or a human rights abuse can be killed without their killers being brought to justice, or without a convincing effort being made to do so, this intimidates and has a chilling effect on other journalists. It marks off the borders of what others know they must not investigate. As a result, the Russian press cannot properly fulfill its function of holding officials to account. This is exactly what the killers intend. I raised this issue recently at a hearing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. I was glad when Daniel Freed, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, acknowledged the nature of the problem and said, ``attacks on journalists, including the brutal and still unsolved murders of Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, among others, chill and deter the fourth estate.'' Mr. Speaker, journalists fulfill an essential role in every society, and none more than those who uncover the theft of a country's assets by its elected officials or commit human rights outrages in its name. Journalists who do this at risk of their lives fully deserve to be called heroes. Make no mistake about it. These journalists knew what they were risking as they wrote and wrote and used the power of the pen to expose. We owe it to them to raise our voice to bring the killers to justice. Mr. Putin, sadly, does not seem to be making any serious efforts to do so. Unfortunately, we have the situation as it exists today in Russia. Only when journalists can work without fear of intimidation and death will we be able to say that we have a truly democratic Russian Government. Russian journalists, they are the watch dogs, just as they are in this country and every other country. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great conscience of Russia, said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 1970, ``Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.'' My resolution addresses the violence of the murder of independent journalists, and the lie in the claim that their murders have been seriously investigated. Solzhenitsyn said of Communist Russia, in our country, the lie has become not just a moral category, but a killer of the state. We have to ask ourselves and ask Mr. Putin, was this terrible statement also true of post-Communist Russia? I think we send a clear message today, and I hope Members in a bipartisan way will support this. Finally, I just want to thank Mark Milosch and Mark Gauge for their work in helping to put this resolution together.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, having personally visited Uganda in April 2006, I chaired a hearing on the endangered children of northern Uganda for the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations. We heard from a number of witnesses and we raised it and continue to raise it with the administration. But one of our witnesses was a particularly noteworthy person, Grace Akallo. Grace is, or was, a child soldier, an abducted young girl, who was totally mistreated by the Lord's Resistance Army. She was turned into a child soldier. And just a couple of days ago, announced her new book called ``Child Soldier'' which makes chilling reading for anybody who wants to know what really goes on in northern Uganda, and how crazed Joseph Kony and his people are; and how, as the distinguished gentleman said just a moment ago, they turn girls into sex slaves and killers and the young men into killing machines. It is a terrible, horrible indictment on how low the individual can sink to. And Joseph Kony, as we all know, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for serious crimes against humanity. And, regrettably, this killing continues to go on. I urge Members to read the book. It is an awakening not just on how she suffered, but also how a person when surrounded by people who love her and give her the kind of support that any individual like herself needs to get, how they can come back, the resiliency of the human spirit. She is a soft-spoken, poised, gentle, lovely young woman who has a great future, but she has been through a nightmare. We ought to keep her and her friends in our prayers. She also pointed out just last week in a meeting that we had announcing her book that she cries out and prays every day for her friends, many of whom she does not know what happened to them. They are still there, she thinks. They may be dead. But she has no idea. I think that puts additional impetus on us to do more, to save these children, this lost generation. Mr. Speaker, over the last 20 years as many as 1.5 million persons, an estimated 90 percent of the population of the Acholi area in northern Uganda have been forced into internally displaced camps as a result of the violence between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda. Nearly half of these internally displaced persons are children under the age of 15, people like Grace Akallo. One quarter of the children in northern Uganda over 10 years of age have lost one or more parents. About a quarter of a million children receive no education at all. The fact that 60 percent of the schools in northern Uganda no longer function is directly attributable to the war. I point out that those that do function do so in a very meager way. Because of the war in the north, Uganda has developed a lost generation that has grown up in dire circumstances with fear and deprivation as their constant companions. Nearly half of the children in one town are stunted from malnutrition. They are likely to never recover. The latest 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices summarized in a chilling fashion the horror that has been perpetrated on the people of northern Uganda, particularly by the head of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. It states that ``at the height of the war, the LRA, led by Joseph Kony, committed serious abuses and atrocities, including abduction, rape and the killing of civilians. The LRA used children as soldiers, held children and others in slave-like conditions, and subjected female captives to rape and other forms of severe sexual exploitation.'' This resolution tries to put additional focus, additional girth, behind the effort to finally find a negotiated solution to this ongoing killing fields, and we all hope and pray this will have at least a happier ending than thus far. Again, I urge Members to read the book by Grace Akallo, ``Girl Soldier.''

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, in early January, a team of scientists from Wake Forest University and Harvard Medical School announced a historic breakthrough: a new readily available source of life-saving stem cells derived exclusively from amniotic fluid. The Washington Post called these highly ethically derived pluripotent stem cells ``highly versatile and readily available.'' Newsweek said, ``A new era begins. Stem cells derived from amniotic fluid show great promise in the lab and may end the divisive ethical debate once and for all because the amniotic fluid stem cells are pluripotent, able to transform into cells representing each of the three major kinds of tissues found in the body.'' And ABC News pointed out that these stem cells can be taken from amniotic fluid with no harm to either the mother or her unborn child. Earlier this week, I met with the Wake Forest University researcher, Dr. Anthony Atala, who led the team credited with this extraordinary study. Dr. Atala made it absolutely clear that these amniotic stem cells are pluripotent and that this research, along with numerous other remarkable initiatives in regenerative medicine, are progressing robustly. Mr. Speaker, in April, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that cord blood stem cells, not embryonic stem cells, were transplanted into 15 patients diagnosed with Type I diabetes and resulted in 13 becoming completely insulin-free. We all know about the New York Times and the other news media carrying the surprise development that's in today's papers. Finally, let me say, Mr. Speaker, recently Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Catholic Conference compiled a comprehensive list of what he calls New Reasons for Hope, 111 recent developments published since Congress's stem cell votes of 2006. It is filled with one breakthrough after another, all attributed to adult stem cells, cord blood, amniotic fluid and the like. That's where the hope is, not in destroying embryos so as to derive their stem cells. Vote ``no'' on this bill. 111 New Reasons to Reconsider the Alleged Need for Stem Cell Research That Destroys Human Embryos Recent Advances (published since 109th Congress's stem cell votes) in Adult Stem Cell Research and Other Alternatives to Embryonic Stem Cell Research June 2006-early June 2007

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Every week, Mr. Speaker, medical journals, science periodicals, as well as the mainstream media, announce and report on yet another promise and advance in adult stem cell research and clinical application. Unlike embryonic stem cell research, which has had a poor track record, adult stem cell therapies are not only the present, they are the future as well. Cord blood stem cells, for example, are healing and mitigating a myriad of diseases today and promising research that suggests better therapies to come. Let me just say a word about embryo destroying stem cell research. It has at least three strikes against it. First, it has an incredible propensity to morph into tumors. Secondly, if embryonic stem cells are ever successful and transplanted into humans, embryonic stem cells carry an enormous proclivity for rejection. And third, embryonic stem cell research requires the killing of human embryos. If it ever worked, the limited supply of so-called spare embryos, and that's a very offensive word, let me just say. Those children who have been adopted from cryogenic tanks--snowflake babies--are a witness against this idea of saying somehow there's a spare embryo. But just take that for what it is. If it ever worked, there would be a near insatiable demand for freshly killed human embryos. On that last point, let me ask my colleagues to consider what Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology said, and he said, ``creating that many lines,'' talking about to meet what would be the need, ``would require millions of embryos from IVF clinics.'' In the March 16, 2006, edition of Stem Cells, Civin and Rao calculated how many embryos would be needed for clinical applications, and they said that embryonic stem cell lines could reach into the millions if the therapies live up to their potential. Millions of human embryos would be killed. That's unconscionable. So this is the tip of the iceberg. You are talking about spare embryos now in this debate but if it ever did work, especially when we have an ethical alternative that does work, but if it ever did work, it would mean requiring the killing of millions of embryos, and I don't think enough Members have looked forward enough to realize where this could take us. That is a brave new world. This is the tip of the iceberg today, and hopefully we will not go that way. We must do ethical stem cell research instead. And let me say one last thing. The Bush administration doubled from 300 to 600 million dollars the amount of money that we are spending on stem cell research. We are passionately in favor of stem cell research, but only the ethical kind.