Dave Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to get at this issue of eggs and how are you going to get them. The gentleman from Pennsylvania has implied that my concerns about women's donation are unfounded. Let me just underscore from the start that there are a lot of people on the left that have a lot of concern about this issue. One of the first people who came into my office to join forces with me on preparing this legislation was Judy Norsigian. She is pro-choice. She helped write the Boston Women's Health Cooperative book, ``Our Bodies, Ourselves.'' Indeed, I think some of the concern about this issue is why I think seven Democrats, seven or eight Democrats with a perfect voting record with NARAL, supported my bill in the 107th Congress and it is over this concern. The gentleman from Pennsylvania implied it's ridiculous, women aren't going to be lining up. The issue is essentially this. If you are going to start doing a lot of this experimentation, you are going to need a lot of eggs because not every egg you put the nucleus in and then zap it with electricity begins to divide and form an embryo. There is a fairly high failure rate if you actually read the research articles, which I have done. There is a pretty high failure rate. So you are going to need lots of eggs to create a few embryos and you are going to need a lot of women to get a lot of eggs. And who will donate their eggs? Well, it is going to be women who will do it for money. It is a painful procedure. Women do this right now. The fertility clinics frequently deal with women who are older and their eggs are not very viable and so they pay typically coeds to donate some of their eggs so that some of these older women can actually have a baby. It is already going on today. But it is going on today on a very limited level and it is going on today for what I think is an ethically and morally appropriate purpose: somebody wants to have a baby, somebody struggling with infertility. But now we are going to be talking about creating these eggs for this research. The research, Mr. Chairman, is going nowhere. I have read the reports. It is not going to ever lead to any cures. The reason the biotech industry wants the Greenwood amendment to prevail and does not want my position to prevail is because they want to create human models of disease so that we can get away from using rats and mice as our models for disease. To me, this is a huge issue. You are talking about creating human embryos, modifying them genetically to preprogram them with diseases, and then selling them for a profit by the biotech industry. I said before, it is an abomination. If you do not think that is an abomination, I do not know what you think is. To me it is absolutely ghastly. Let me just close by again saying all of this research can proceed with animal models unfettered under the provisions of the bill that the chairman has brought to the floor. You can continue with animal research. You can clone DNA. You can clone animals. You can clone cells. You just cannot create a human embryo under the provision of this legislation. I think it is the right thing to do. I think that morally it is the correct thing to do. I would again encourage all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this substitute and vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill. I want to commend the gentleman from Wisconsin for his very eloquent remarks.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I again thank the chairman for his work in this area, and I thank him for yielding me this time. The Greenwood substitute purports to be a ban on human cloning. It is a moratorium on human cloning. It is a 10-year prohibition that sunsets; and it allows unfettered, essentially, the creation of human embryos in the lab for the purpose of research; and then it requires their destruction, essentially, through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer or human cloning. We have never gone in this direction before where we are actually talking about creating human embryos in the lab for exploiting them and destroying them. There have been a few labs in different places in the country that have tried to do this. One successfully. There are fertility clinics that have so-called excess embryos, and some of them have made those embryos available for stem cell research. This bill does not affect that. That would be permissible to move forward. The question before us is, is the Greenwood substitute a real ban on human cloning? I contend it is not. It would still allow the creation of clones in the lab in embryonic form, and I believe very strongly that it will usher in what the supporters of the substitute claim that they do not want to see and that is reproductive cloning, because we will have all of these labs generating these embryos and eventually one of them or more will find its way into unscrupulous hands, will be implanted, and will result in reproductive cloning. Might I also add that there are some people who want to allow this research to move forward so that they can some day be able to do reproductive cloning. At a hearing we had on this issue, I had Dr. Brian Cohen testify before the committee, and he repeatedly said, ``We are opposed to reproductive cloning at this time.'' He kept saying ``at this time.'' And I finally asked him, ``What do you mean by 'at this time'?'' And he is the executive director, or the president, of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine; and then he went on to basically say that if they can work through all of the problems with cloning that they would some day like to be able to do it. And what will happen, what will be next with that? I contend that the age of eugenics will have arrived. There will be people who will then want to manipulate these embryos for the purpose of creating a human with preintended specifications, specifying size, height, weight, athletic performance, intellectual capabilities; and it will open a Pandora's box of frightful potentialities that I feel that we as a civilization do not want to open up, and therefore I strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote against the substitute and vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to address the House regarding the very important issue of human cloning. The question before our Nation is are we going to allow human cloning in the United States of America or are we going to ban human cloning? In the 107th Congress, I introduced legislation, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. This legislation ultimately was reviewed and passed approvingly after hearings by the Committee on the Judiciary and was brought to the floor of the House and received a favorable vote in the House of Representatives passing by a margin of 265 for, 162 against. Of note in that vote there were some 63 Democrats who voted in support of this legislation to ban all forms of human cloning. And I would point out that many of the Democrats who voted in support of banning human cloning were pro-choice. There are many people who have tried to define this debate about human cloning as liberal/conservative. They have tried to define it as a pro-life/pro-abortion rights kind of debate; but in reality the debate on human cloning transcends some of those traditional divisions that separate the political parties and factions within the House of Representatives and within our Nation. Unfortunately, the legislation to ban all forms of human cloning that passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives 2 years ago, almost 2 years ago now, it was never taken up by the Senate. The Senate never held a vote on the issue. Therefore, the issue was essentially left open; and, indeed, many Americans are shocked and surprised to learn today that there is no law on the books in the United States of America to ban human cloning. Indeed, many foreign countries have already moved, they have already acted to ban human cloning. Several European countries have banned it outright, like Germany, for example. Norway has banned it completely. The European Parliament has called for a complete ban on human cloning. The French Senate very recently voted to ban all forms of human cloning. So clearly there is a tide sweeping the globe that says, no, we are not going to move away from human pro- creation to baby manufacturing, which is really what this debate is all about in its essence. Due to the failure of the Senate, or the other body, to act on this issue, I reintroduced my legislation along with my colleague from Michigan (Mr. Stupak). Our bill is H.R. 534, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003. And I would like to talk a little bit about what the legislation is and what it does, and I have a few visuals to help with this debate. First of all, I would like to start out with what is human cloning. In normal sexual reproduction, the sperm and the egg unite to form a single-cell embryo, and that single-cell embryo rapidly begins a process of dividing to form this multicell embryo. And, of course, from there it develops further into the fetal stage of development forming a baby and ultimately a human being like you and I. In human cloning we have a procedure called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and what happens here is you take a human egg and you either deactivate the nucleus in the egg or you remove it, and there are two different approaches to that. And you essentially end up with an egg that has no nuclear material in it. In a normal human egg, the normal cells in our bodies have 46 chromosomes; but in the egg there are 23 chromosomes and in the sperm there are 23, and they come together to form a new unique human being with 46 chromosomes. So in the process of cloning, you either deactivate this nucleus or you eject it out. So you end up with an enucleated egg. And then you take a cell from somebody's body, and in this depiction this has the appearance of a skin cell and you extract the nucleus out of that cell, and you place it inside the egg. And this is why it is called nuclear transfer. It is called somatic cell nuclear transfer because the cells in our bodies are called somatic cells or body cells. Somatic means body. And then what happens next is typically they zap this egg with a little bit of electricity, and lo and behold it begins to divide and form an embryo. This, of course, is the first mammal that was ever cloned. The first species that was cloned, I believe, it occurred in the 1950s. It was a carrot. But this creation of Dolly the sheep was the first example of a mammal being cloned. Prior to cloning Dolly, there had been some other vertebrates that were cloned, but Dolly was the first mammal. And, of course, we as humans are mammals. And the reason this created so much news is because Dolly a sheep, a mammal very similar to us, and what they did there was they took an udder, cell which is essentially a mammary duct cell, and they took the nucleus out of it from the donor sheep, and then they took another sheep and they took an egg from that sheep and removed the nucleus. And so they did the nuclear transfer technology, and so they had the DNA of this sheep in the egg from this sheep. They zapped it with electricity. They got it to grow in culture, and then they transplanted it into another female sheep. And this is, of course, the surrogate mother and Dolly was created. And here is Dolly depicted here. This sheep is a genetic duplicate of this sheep, the one that you took the nucleus out of. This sheep can be construed as the twin or this one can be construed as the twin of this sheep. Now, it is worth noting that Dolly was born on July 5, 1996. Almost immediately Dolly began to show signs of premature aging. Indeed, the researchers who have studied all the cloned mammals that have been cloned so far, pigs, goats, mice, they all show genetic defects in all of them. Dolly manifested early arthritis; and, of course, she had to be euthanized, or put to sleep, recently because of the development of further medical conditions. She essentially experienced half the normal life expectancy of a normal sheep. And this is one of the principle issues why many people feel that to do cloning in humans, as some people are proposing, is morally and ethically reprehensible. It took 237 attempts to create Dolly with many miscarriages, many sheep being born with very, very severe birth defects. So if we try to do this with humans, the question, of course, becomes how many humans will be born, how many babies will be born with birth defects? How will we take care of them? Who will be responsible for them? One of the most disturbing things about all this is if we were able to overcome those immediate birth-related problems, what would the life of a person who was cloned be like? Would they manifest premature aging? Would they ultimately succumb to diseases at an early age? This is clearly experimentation of the absolute worst and most reprehensible kind, and there is general agreement that we should outlaw cloning specifically of this type, referred to as reproductive cloning. What this House will engage in a tremendous amount of debate on over the next few days is the issue of whether or not we should allow something called therapeutic cloning or the creation of cloned embryos in the lab. I anticipate that there will be a substitute for my legislation being offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood). His legislation contends that it is best to simply outlaw the creation of a human being but to allow the unfettered creation of human embryos in the lab to be exploited for research purposes because of the supposed great potential of these to lead to cures to many diseases. I know there are a lot of people who have some questions about this issue, and I would be very happy to yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi), a distinguished freshman from the Flagstaff area. I understand he had some questions for me about this issue.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I would be happy to do that.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to respond to his question. This is a very, very important issue, and it gets essentially to the crux of the debate we are going to have here on the floor of this body on Thursday when H.R. 534 comes up for discussion, debate, and consideration and vote, and I want to just point out one very very important thing about this. They are trying to call embryo cloning somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the reason they are trying to do that, scientifically that is what it is, but the overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to all forms of human cloning. It is something like 65, 70, 80 percent of the American people are against all forms of human cloning, and so they are trying to put a pretty face on it so they are calling it somatic cell nuclear transfer. The important point I want to raise I think was stated very nicely by the President's National Bioethics Advisory Commission back in 1997, and they said the commission began its discussion fully recognizing that any efforts in humans to transfer a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated egg involves the creation of an embryo with the apparent potential to be planted in utero and developed to term. So what they are saying here is this is cloning. So they may want to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer but it is definitely cloning. They go on to say this is not science fiction you see in movies, but rather a reasonable and appropriate way to alleviate the horrors faced by patients suffering from deadly painful diseases. This kind of language in my opinion is reprehensible. There is no basis in science to make a claim like this, and I have been saying this over and over again. I would be very, very happy to debate these people who go around making these claims. Therapeutic cloning has never been done. It is going to be debated here as though it is a scientific fact. It is a scientific fiction. It has never been demonstrated in humans. What is more, it has never even been demonstrated in an animal model. We purchase from research labs these animals that are genetically programmed to develop diabetes. We cannot take this technology and use it to even cure an animal. The advocates for embryo cloning do not have even one, one, example of where in an animal model they can cure disease; and for them to go so far as to say this has the potential to alleviate the horrors faced by patients suffering from deadly diseases, I think it is a horror that they would make such a grossly exaggerated and false statement, because it raises the false hopes of millions of Americans who suffer from these diseases. There is no scientific evidence that this has the potential to be effective at this time. I apologize, this is a very, very long answer to the gentleman's question. But my legislation to ban cloning does not prohibit animal cloning, and it does not prohibit animal embryo cloning, and so the advocates for this will have unfettered ability to demonstrate that this works in animal models, and if they can demonstrate that it works in animal models, they can come back to the Congress and say we really feel very strongly that you need to allow this to move forward in human models, the Congress has the ability to reverse the law. But that is a grossly exaggerated claim. I understand the gentleman wanted to ask me some more questions in a colloquy.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. This is a very confusing quote because it really mixes two issues. It starts out saying cloning is a widely used, vital medical tool that has allowed scientists and researchers to develop powerful new drugs. What they are talking about is we have been cloning tissues in the labs for years, we have been cloning animals in the labs for years, we have been cloning DNA in the lab, and some of these cloning technologies are finding their way into the research and development arenas that are used for development of new drugs, produce insulin, useful bacteria in the lab. And so those statements are true. But my bill does not ban those things. This group, CAMR, or the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, they are against my bill; but in that response they fail to point out that my bill does not ban all of that animal cloning and all of that DNA cloning, all that stuff that is going on. What it specifically only bans is human cloning, an attempt to create a human embryo in the lab, and they seem to imply in the first sentence of that quote the gentleman just read that it is a vital medical tool. Those applications that would be permissible under my legislation are certainly vital, and they will proceed unfettered, but human cloning is not a vital medical tool. There is not one research article where human cloning has been used to treat anybody of anything. Might I also add, the crux of this debate is the whole issue of regenerative medicine and if a person gets sick, the traditional tools used by physicians are surgery and medications to make a person well; and of course there is therapy and there are lots of other modalities to make people well. But an additional tool is this concept of regenerative medicine where we take cells and put cells in a person's body and those cells make a person better, and adults themselves have actually been used in 45 human clinical trials to make people well. Embryonic stem cells have never been used in a single clinical trial to ever make anybody well. Embryo stem cells have never been used in an animal model to heal an animal. There have been a couple of studies that seem to suggest that embryo stem cells might have some potential at some point in the future, but they do not have a model where we can take an animal with disease and make it well, and that is what they are trying to imply by this response. Again, it is a very deceptive response, and I apologize for these lengthy responses to the gentleman's inquiries. These issues are just very, very complicated science, and it is very hard to do them justice by just giving 8-second sound-bite responses to the questions.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. That is absolutely correct. The National Academy of Sciences panel made that recommendation, but then they acknowledged there were no bioethicists on the panel, and then they went on further to state that others should debate the ethics of this. There were no bioethicists. There were no theologians. There were no elected representatives from the people, no representatives from the community. And they wisely said that others should debate the morality and the ethics of this issue; and frankly, they wisely said that because the path that they are recommending that we allow the creation of human life in the lab for research purposes and then those human embryos are to be destroyed is an entirely new path for us to walk down. Historically in our Nation we have always stood up for protecting life. The recent historical departure from that, Roe v. Wade, that decision was rendered in the context, at least my understanding of the interpretation of the decision of the court was not that the baby developing inside the woman is not alive and not that it is not human and not that it is a commodity that can just be manipulated and discarded, but that the right of reproductive freedom or privacy of the mother trumped the right to life of the baby, a decision I do not particularly agree with. But now we are talking about going in a whole new direction. We are talking about creating life expressly for the purpose of exploiting it and destroying it. A parallel would be for a woman to deliberately try to get pregnant so she could have an abortion. Clearly this is a moral and ethical quagmire that I do not think we should walk down as a Nation. I will just cite for you one example of where this would lead us if we allow therapeutic cloning or embryo cloning. The artificial womb is available to us today. You can take a mammalian embryo and drop it in the artificial womb, and it will pass from the embryonic stage into the fetal stage of development and can survive up to 30 days of development. That will be the next place these researchers will want to go to. Who on Earth would want to extract stem cells from an embryo and try to grow those embryo stem cells into, let us say you want heart tissue. Why would you want to go through the ordeal of in a petri dish trying to grow those cells into heart tissue when you could just much more cheaply and easily place that embryo into an artificial womb and then come back 2 weeks or 3 weeks later and get the tissue you want out of it? That is the slippery slope we are going down. So it is a moral and ethical minefield that I think we as a Nation should not enter into, and we should ban all forms of human cloning.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Actually, I do not know if the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) is going to change his language before it comes to the floor, but the language as I last saw it, it is not actually a ban. It is a moratorium. It is a 10-year moratorium on reproductive cloning, taking the cloned embryo and putting it in the uterus of a surrogate mother for the purpose of creating a child. It is a 10-year moratorium. It essentially is saying we do not think this is something we want to allow for the next 10 years, but in 10 years we may want to allow reproductive cloning. So I do not think it is a true ban. The other point I want to mention, and I have debated my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, on this issue many times in the past, a reproductive-only ban is very, very difficult to enforce. Indeed, I have a quote from the Justice Department I am going to put up on the easel here in a minute where they state categorically it is going to be very, very hard to enforce. If you allow research cloning to proliferate all over the country, you are going to have dozens of labs producing human embryos for experimental research purposes. It would be very, very easy for an unscrupulous, dishonest physician to do this. I am a physician and I know as a fact that not every physician is an honest person. The medical profession draws its ranks from the human race and there are people who do bad things even within the medical profession. It will be very easy for an unscrupulous physician to implant one of those human embryos into a woman in the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, and it would be impossible for our Justice Department to police such a thing and prevent it from happening. Indeed, if a physician did that and a baby were to develop, what could the government do at that point? They certainly would not mandate an abortion on a woman like that. And so I feel very, very strongly that the Feinstein-Hatch-type approach in the other body or the Greenwood approach would actually help usher in reproductive cloning, the very thing that they say they want to prohibit.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Here again what they are trying to do is change the terminology. They have been losing the debate on this issue with the hearts and minds of the American people, so they are now trying to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer rather than embryo cloning or therapeutic cloning. When they called it those things, people understood exactly what it is. But when they say somatic cell nuclear transfer, suddenly people do not know what they are talking about and they may be able to get this thing through. Clearly as a scientist, as a physician, I can tell you that you are talking about creating human embryos, there is no two ways around it, with the potential to develop into a human being. That is not only my opinion; it is the opinion of the Bioethics Advisory Commission. The same commission has a number of members who feel that therapeutic cloning or embryo cloning should be permissible, but they readily recognize that as soon as you take a somatic cell nucleus and put it in an enucleated egg, it involves the creation of an embryo with the apparent potential to be implanted in a uterus and developed to term. It is the procedure used to create Dolly. So to try to say it is not, I think, is misleading. The facts are the facts.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. The gentleman raises an absolutely important point. That is, the debates that they are bringing up here were the same exact debates 10 years ago on fetal tissue research. One of the amazing aspects of all this is Senator Hatch was one of the people who led the charge against fetal tissue research in the other body 10 years ago, and now today he is leading the charge to allow embryo cloning, which is a great irony for me. As I mentioned to you before, there is no basis in science to make a claim like that. I find it very reprehensible for them to hold out hopes to millions and millions of Americans that this is going to be the cure for their condition. I will simply just point out, if that were the case, if this statement were true, you would go into the research labs at Harvard and Yale and UCLA and all the prestigious medical schools throughout the Nation and I would expect all the research scientists to be working on cloning, but in point of fact they are not. The reason they are not is because this is a bogus, absurd statement. There is no evidence in science that substantiates a claim like this, that you are going to be able to cure all these millions of Americans of all of these diseases. I will just simply point out a very important point that they fail to mention. If that were the case, where would you get all the eggs to do all this? It took dozens and dozens of eggs to create Dolly. If you come down with one of these diseases they describe here, we cannot necessarily cure you with one egg. We might need a dozen eggs to get one good clone of you that might develop into an embryo. By the way, this is all science fiction, this is not real; but this is what they are claiming. You would literally need billions of eggs. Who is going to donate all these eggs? To get the eggs, to get a woman's egg, you have to give a woman powerful drugs that cause a phenomenon called superovulation, so instead of one egg developing you get a dozen eggs developing. The drugs have side effects. Thirty percent of women who take those drugs develop depression. You have to give them these powerful drugs, and then you have to give them a general anesthetic and do a surgical procedure to harvest the eggs. This is not some simple, minor procedure that you can have done in a medical office in 30 seconds. You are talking about an ordeal for a woman to donate her eggs. And for them to make the absurd notion that you are going to cure 100 million Americans with this, you would literally need 1 billion eggs. Mind you, they do not have one, one example where they can do one of these things in an animal model. Not one. I have challenged some of the most prestigious scientists in the world with this question. Show me one, one article where you can do this in a human. None. I say show me one article, one research article, a peer-reviewed journal article where you can do this in an animal model. None. They have absolutely none. But they make these bald-faced, absurd assertions that they are going to cure 100 million people with all these conditions. I think it is shameful that they would seriously consider this. I very much appreciate the opportunity to engage in this colloquy with the gentleman.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank the gentleman. It has certainly been a pleasure to engage in this colloquy. I would be very happy to recognize the gentlewoman from Colorado and yield to her if she would like to say a few words about this very important issue.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, and those were very well taken points. This is clearly a line in the sand. It is a demarcation point; and if we go across that line, if we say we are going to start creating human lives for the purpose of exploiting them for scientific research and then discarding them, where does that take us next? What comes around the corner? I have been arguing for years that it will usher in reproductive cloning. Indeed, in testimony that we received in my committee, we had a Dr. Cohen, Brian Cohen, who represented the American Society of Reproductive Medicine; and in his testimony he repeatedly said ``We are opposed to reproductive cloning at this time,'' and he said it twice. Finally I asked him, ``Why did you say `We are opposed to reproductive cloning at this time'?'' And this fellow represents the Association of Fertility Experts in the United States, and essentially his response to me was that once all the science is worked out on this where it can be done safely, they want to be able to do it. They want to be able to clone human beings. And this is the brave new world, no longer confined to fiction literature, but it has essentially arrived because the follow-ons to this will be genetic manipulation, genetic enhancements. Eugenetics is what it is called, an attempt to try to eliminate undesirable traits in our culture and our society. So people will begin to not only select the gender of their desired offspring, but they may actually want to manipulate the genetic code of their offspring so they can get a specific height or size or physical appearance or IQ. I would imagine athletic performance will be one of the things that they will go after. And this is the Pandora's box of issues that we are opening up if we allow human cloning to occur in the United States. Therapeutic cloning, embryo cloning or reproductive cloning, it is the path we are going down. And I just want to underscore the importance of us banning all forms of human cloning, which is what we are able to do in the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003, and I just want to again underscore that there are people who are going to try to put lipstick on the pig. They are going to try to say that this is not cloning; and they are going to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer, or they are going to try to call it nuclear transfer technologies; and we are going to hear this kind of language being used both in this body and the other body. It is cloning. It is creating human embryos through the process of cloning. And people need to remember that no matter what they call it, that is what it is. I just want to underscore additionally that this is not purely a pro- life issue. Cloning of all types, therapeutic, embryonic, and reproductive cloning, has been made illegal in Germany by the leadership of the Green Party, which is pro-choice. Indeed, in the vote that we had passing my bill in the 107th Congress, I had seven or eight people voting for the legislation who had a 100 percent voting record with the National Abortion Rights Action League. And so clearly this is not an abortion debate. It is different from that. There are a lot of people who are pro-life like myself who have a very strong moral and ethical objection to cloning on the basis of simply creating human life in the lab to be exploited and destroyed, a so-called utilitarian approach. But there are many people on the left who are strongly opposed to cloning because of their concern about eugenics, because of their concern about the impact this could have on the disability community, and very importantly there are a lot of people who are very concerned about the exploitation of women. If we are going to have in this country dozens of labs creating hundreds of human embryos every year for the purpose of doing research, where are we going to get those eggs from? Who is going to donate their eggs? Who will submit themselves to this kind of research? I will say who I think it will be. It will probably be poor women. It will probably be predominantly women of color. Indeed, I want to read this quote from Judy Norsigian. She is the co- author of ``Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century,'' the Boston Women's Health Collective book, hardly a right wing group. What does she say? ``Because embryo cloning will compromise women's health, turn their eggs and wombs into commodities, compromise their reproductive autonomy, and with virtual certainty lead to the production of experimental human beings, we are convinced that the line must be drawn here.'' And I was very encouraged by this latter part of her quote. She is not only concerned about women being exploited, but she has a concern about the dignity, the human dignity, and the indignity of this to be creating human beings for experimental research purposes and then to be discarded. If research cloning is allowed to proceed in this country, or therapeutic cloning unfettered, in my opinion what ultimately will happen, because it will be so expensive to get these eggs from women in the United States because they will have to pay women thousands of dollars to undergo the procedure, because of the fairly high incidence of depression in women who take these superovulatory drugs, we may have women requiring hospitalization following the egg donation procedure or maybe even going so far as attempting suicide, what I think they will end up doing is they will end up going to third world countries. They will end up going to Central America, South America, away from the trial attorneys in the United States that can lead to lawsuits, away from the prying eyes of the American press and where they can pay women peanuts in order to get their eggs; and that I think is one of the concerns of people like Judy Norsigian. She knows that ultimately the potential exists for women to be exploited, and that is just shameful that it would happen when there is no evidence that this could even work in animals. Indeed, the evidence, there was just recently an article in the mouse model where they tried to do therapeutic cloning and it did not work. The other thing I want to just share is this quote from Daniel Bryant, who is the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs. He says ``enforcing a modified cloning ban would be problematic and pose certain law enforcement challenges that would be lessened with an outright ban on human cloning. Anything short of an outright ban would present other difficulties to law enforcement. And what he is talking about here is if we take the approach advocated by the form of the legislation being promoted by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) in the House and Senators Hatch and Feinstein in the other body, just a reproductive ban, how will we enforce that? It will be impossible to enforce that. We will have all of these embryos in all of these labs. The Justice Department, police officers cannot monitor these labs regularly to make sure the embryos have been discarded rather than implanted in women. There will be no way to know whether or not reproductive cloning has occurred. So I feel very, very strongly that this is the best way for us to go. I will also point out that the President has indicated that he wants a complete ban on all forms of human cloning, reproductive and so- called therapeutic cloning. So clearly, the time has arrived. It is critical that we as a Nation do the right thing. I believe the House of Representatives will do the right thing and ban human cloning in all of its forms, both embryonic cloning and so-called reproductive cloning, that all attempts at creating human embryos in the lab will be prohibited. This is an enforceable ban and a lasting ban. The advocates who say that we must allow embryo cloning in the lab because of its great potential to lead to cures of all these diseases, I again issue my challenge, show me the evidence. Traditionally in this country we always have demonstrated that it works in animals before we attempt it in humans. Show us the evidence in the scientific literature that this works in animals. They cannot. They will not be able to. The reason they cannot is because it cannot be done. It has not been done in human models. Clearly this takes us down a very dangerous and precarious path, creating human life for the purpose of exploiting it and then destroying it. A very dangerous road for us to walk as a Nation. So I would encourage all of my colleagues to vote in support of the ban on human cloning that we will be debating in the House of Representatives.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, on January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia and her crew, Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, Specialist Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon, rocketed off launch pad 39 A, the same launch pad which was used to launch Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the Moon. I was there on that day on January 16th. It was a beautiful launch, filled with tremendous excitement and hope for the potential work of the crew of Columbia. They left on a 16-day research mission, and they were performing research in a number of disciplines, from biological and medical research to physical sciences, Earth sciences and space sciences, as well as product development. In total, an amazing 86 different research experiments were ongoing during this extended shuttle mission. This required the crew to work 24 hours a day in two different 12- hour-a-day shifts. Their motto for the mission was ``ex orbe scientia'': from orbit, science. Many people are saying that we should abandon research in low-Earth orbit and head straight to Mars, but I can tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, as a medical doctor, I can attest to the myriad number of medical problems a crew to Mars may face. The crew of STS-107 was working hard on a number of experiments to help us understand better and counteract some of the challenges medically and physiologically that a crew would face on an extended voyage such as a trip to Mars. I will just cite a couple of examples of the types of research they were doing. One of the principal challenges of zero gravity is a decline in bone mass that occurs when we are up in space. It is actually we lose 1 percent of our bone mass each month we are on orbit. If we are to venture out truly into long-duration space missions, such as a trip to Mars, we need to find ways to counteract this bone loss that occurs on orbit. The crew of STS-107, the Columbia mission that was tragically lost, was trying to understand better the bone loss that occurs in space and things that can be done to counteract it. Needless to say, as a physician, I know full well the tremendous potential that this research could have yielded back on Earth. I took care of many patients who suffered personal tragedies from the consequences of osteoporosis, the same phenomenon that occurs on orbit with our astronauts. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the research experiment was actually done on the astronauts themselves, and so a tremendous amount of knowledge and understanding about the effects of space on bone loss was lost with the crew. Additional research was being done on the immune system. As we all know, our Nation, our world, has been wracked by new challenges, medical challenges that affect the immune system in humans, and what has been discovered is that the immune system of astronauts on orbit is impaired. Whether it is the stress of rocketing off into space or adaptation to zero G or other features of the unique features of space environment, astronauts on orbit experience a loss of immune function, and the crew of STS-107 was studying this issue as well. They were studying pharmacokinetics that are changed in space. Pharmacokinetic is the absorption of drugs from our gastrointestinal tract and how they are handled and eliminated by our body, and there are some very, very unique features of the zero G environment that this crew was studying. Protein turnover in space. We all lose muscle mass as we age. As well, we lose muscle mass in space, and this loss of muscle mass with aging, there may be ways to counteract that, and there may be links to counteracting this muscle mass loss in space and what we can do here on Earth to help the elderly or people with physical conditions that involved significant muscle mass. Renal stones, they were doing research in this arena. The vestibular system which controls our balance, they were doing research on. This is very, very critical for many elderly people who experience difficulties with their balance system and experience falls as they get on in years, and the crew of STS-107 was doing research in this area as well. Perhaps one of the most promising areas of research for the American people is the work they were doing on cancer research. The work they were doing with prostate cancer specifically involved the bioreactor, and regretfully all of this research was lost. Mr. Speaker, I conclude by just saying this was a great human tragedy, the loss of this crew. It was a great blow to our space program. It was also a great blow to the advancement of science.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Crosswinds Youth Services, a nonprofit organization in my congressional district that has served Florida's Space Coast for the past 28 years. Yesterday, February 10, Crosswinds Youth Services received the prestigious National Network for Youth Agency of the Year Award, and I am proud to recognize their outstanding achievement. The National Network for Youth states in its award letter: ``It is truly a great honor that Crosswinds Youth Services this year has been judged to be the best organization in the Nation serving runaway, homeless, and other youth in crisis. This award goes to the best among the best in America. Crosswinds is the first organization in Florida to win this award.'' According to the National Network for Youth, each year in America, 5,000 runaways die from assault, illness, and suicide. Crosswinds is an extraordinary organization doing extraordinary work. The men and women involved in this organization need to be commended, and I am honored to rise in support of them on this day.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time, and I thank him for his leadership on space policy issues. Today I join with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to honor the crew of Columbia. The names of these brave men and women will now forever be linked to the risks and rewards of exploring the final frontier. They were all extraordinary people. Commander Rick Husband was a man of strong faith who had dreamed of space travel since his childhood in Amarillo, Texas. He was a family man. He was committed to his community. He set the highest standards for us all. Pilot William McCool was a man who personified excellence in all that he did. He was from San Diego. Since an early age he had dreamed of flying and following his dream with an unending font of energy and skill. He was highly gifted, but evidently he rarely showed any hubris. In fact, he was described as always humble, something we all could learn from. Mission Specialist Michael Anderson was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He loved learning and science, and it was in following his passion for science that led him to NASA and to space flight. He knew his responsibilities as an astronaut and took every opportunity to talk to schoolchildren with excitement and enthusiasm about the value of space exploration. Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla lived a uniquely American life. Born and raised in India, she came to America as an immigrant. She worked hard and studied engineering and science. She became an American citizen and from there became an astronaut. She made both the nation of her birth, India, and her adopted country, America, proud of her and her accomplishments. Mission Specialist David Brown was truly a man for all seasons. He was a physician like myself, a Navy pilot, and a member of the astronaut corps. Everything he set out to do, he accomplished. He had many other goals he was anxious to accomplish after this mission had been completed. Mission Specialist Laurel Clark, a wife, a mother, a physician, also. She enjoyed scuba diving and flying airplanes. She was aware of that special honor that was hers to fly in space, and she was thankful for it. She was certainly somebody who lived life to the fullest. The man, of course, who was in many ways of most interest was Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. He was the first Israeli in space, a national hero in his homeland, a dedicated husband and father, a brave pilot, the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors. He was an inspiration to his nation and to us all. Commander Husband, on the evening before they launched, shared with his crew and their families his favorite passage from the book of Joshua. I would like to share it with my colleagues today. It reads: ``Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will prosper and be successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.'' As Commander Husband invoked those words of the Bible to encourage his crew to be strong and courageous, we today should take heed of those words. We live in a dangerous world with many challenges facing us. The measure of a truly great nation is one that can face its challenges and excel and lead the world to a higher level. That is why we have NASA and why we must recommit ourselves now more than ever to the dream and adventure of human space flight. The crew of Columbia would want nothing less. It was what they lived for. It was what they died for. How we decide to respond to this tragedy will be judged very closely by many generations that come after us. We are a nation of explorers. We cannot let future generations down and walk away from our destiny in space. The Columbia Seven crew would best be memorialized by a great, strong, robust commitment to space exploration.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I missed two votes on Monday, January 27 due to my attendance at the funeral for Florida State Senator Howard Futch. Had I been present for rollcall votes 13 and 14 I would have voted in favor of both resolutions.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader, and I am truly honored to be described in that fashion. Let me commend the gentleman on the outstanding work he has done in shepherding what I think was one of the most problematic pieces of legislation to come through this body. Mr. Speaker, I am the chairman of the Committee on Civil Service, Census and Agency Organization, and I want to just specifically comment on the civil service issue which I think was the item that was really holding this up more than anything else. And with 1 minute I cannot get into this in detail, but I feel very, very strongly that this is a good compromise product. And indeed as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), my friend, said earlier today, and I am in 100 percent agreement with him, this will be probably the best civil service system within the Federal Government and can actually serve as a model for how we can reform the entire system so that it does what the American people want, which is really promote and reward excellence within our civil service work force, and that is what the people want who work for our Federal Government and that is what is necessary to protect the American people. This is called the Department of Homeland Security. Let us remember their mission: Protecting the public.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. Winston Churchill is purported to have once said: ``An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.'' I contend that Saddam Hussein is that crocodile. For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein has wreaked havoc on our world. He has established a pattern of deception and untold cruelty against humanity. The Iraqi dictator has made a mockery of the international community by defying 16 United Nations resolutions. He has deceived and defied the will and the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. He has gassed, tortured, starved, and executed the people of Iraq, including tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. He has provided a support network for, and has housed, terrorists. He has refused to account for missing Gulf War prisoners. He has refused access multiple times to U.N. weapons inspectors, in spite of his promises to allow complete inspections of weapons of mass destruction. He has refused to return stolen military equipment. He has fired upon American military forces patrolling the no-fly zone. He has sought to circumvent economic sanctions. Most alarming to me, Mr. Speaker, as a physician, he has developed weapons of mass destruction, including biological and chemical weapons, with long-range ballistic missiles capable to create untold devastation and human misery. Worse, he is close to possessing a nuclear weapon. Mr. Speaker, as a physician, I can tell the Members that we can remediate and protect to a certain degree against chemical and biological attacks, but there is no way to deal with a nuclear explosion. All of these findings are well documented and are a matter of public record. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Saddam Hussein stands alone because, as President Bush said, it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place under the leadership of a merciless dictator. Some critics have argued that the U.S. should only take military action against Saddam Hussein if the U.N. Security Council endorses military action. While I believe it is important to seek international support, including support of the U.N. Security Council, I do not believe it is wise to give other nations like Russia, China, and France veto authority over the national security interests of the American people. Military conflict is not something to be undertaken lightly, nor is it something we should undertake without exhausting efforts to resolve the issues at hand in other ways. Unfortunately, over the past 10 years, since the end of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein has chosen to be an outlaw from the international community. He has chosen to disregard the will of the international community. Some would like to pretend that he has not done this, that he has not been continuing the development of weapons of mass destruction, that he has not been harboring terrorists, that he is not aiding those who seek to harm America. The record of his dictatorship demonstrates otherwise. We have been students of history. While conflict is not something that we desire, it is something a peaceloving people sometimes have to engage in in order to protect the peace. This often is the only way to stop greater evil from being brought to bear on millions of innocent men, women, and children. What would have been the course of history had a policy of appeasement toward Adolph Hitler not been adopted in 1938? The world was promised peace then, and 6 months later the world was engulfed in World War II. We have been engaged in an appeasement of Saddam Hussein over the past decade. He has been unwilling to respond to the pressure of the international community. How much longer should we continue this policy of appeasement? What if we refused to take the necessary action to stop the Iraqi dictator from building these weapons? I feel the results could be catastrophic. I urge my colleagues to support the resolution.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and the underlying bill. I just want to touch on a very, very important issue and that is defensive medicine, the incorrect costs of liability on the practice of medicine in the United States. Now, I practiced medicine for 15 years prior to being elected. I still see patients once a month. I practice defensive medicine. I know it is real. I want to share with my colleagues who think this is not a Federal issue. A study was done, it was published in the Journal of Economics in May of 1996, looking at the impact of the California tort reforms on health care costs and specifically they looked in the Medicare plan. And they discovered that there was a 5 to 9 percent reduction in health care costs brought about in the Medicare plan in the State of California attributable to the caps on noneconomic damages and less defensive medicine. This is an excellent study, and I would encourage all of my colleagues to read it. What this study also looked at was morbidity and mortality. They said it is not enough to just look at a decline in health care charges, but was it having an adverse effect on patients; were there more complications; were there more deaths. And lo and behold there were not. The researchers out of Stanford University, it is an excellent study published by Kessler and McClellan, they extrapolated this data and concluded that defensive medicine, because of liability, costs us $50 billion a year. How can that be? I can tell you the patients came in my office. I thought they had this; I would order that test. And then I would say to myself, What if they have something else? What if they have this or that? What if they sue me? So I would start ordering the additional tests to prevent myself from being sued. Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support this rule and support the underlying bill. It is a Federal issue. [From the Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1996] Do Doctors Practice Defensive Medicine? [By Daniel Kessler; Mark McClellan] ``Defensive medicine'' is a potentially serious social problem: if fear of liability drives health care providers to administer treatments that do not have worthwhile medical benefits, then the current liability system may generate inefficiencies much larger than the cost of compensating malpractice claimants. To obtain direct empirical evidence on this question, we analyze the effects of malpractice liability reforms using data on all elderly Medicare beneficiaries treated for serious heart disease in 1984, 1987, and 1990. We find that malpractice reforms that directly reduce provider liability pressure lead to reductions of 5 to 9 percent in medical expenditures without substantial effects on mortality or medical complications. We conclude that liability reforms can reduce defensive medical practices.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the Seniors Access to Health Care Act of 2002 in order to guarantee that senior citizens continue to have access to health care providers under the Medicare program. This bill includes most of the provisions of a bill (H.R. 4954) that was approved earlier this year to restore payments to health care providers, ensuring that they continue to see seniors. I am introducing this bill, today because the Senate has failed to approve legislation establishing a prescription drug plan for seniors and a restoration of payments to providers. I am fully committed to enacting a prescription drug plan for senior citizens, but given the failure of Democrat Majority Leader Tom Daschle to secure Senate passage of a prescription drug bill, I believe it would be doubly harmful to seniors if we allowed additional provider cuts to go into effect. It is for this reason that I believe it is important that we at least ensure that these additional cuts are averted. We should plug this hole while we continue to work together to address the need for a prescription drug plan for seniors. Last year physicians saw a 5 percent reduction in their reimbursement rates from Medicare. This year, without the changes proposed in my legislation, they will see another 5.7 percent reduction. This cut comes at a time when providers are facing an unprecedented rise in medical malpractice premiums, and a dramatic increase in the costs of health insurance premiums for their own employees. A second year of reductions in Medicare reimbursements will lead more providers to drop out of the Medicare program or to leave medical practice altogether. It is important for seniors that we not allow this to happen. The other significant change from the House-passed bill is the removal of the requirement for nationwide competitive bidding in durable medical equipment. I believe additional work needs to be done in this arena to fully understand its impacts on savings and quality of care.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it has been fascinating to listen to the debate on the other side on this bill. This issue began in 1996 when some of the residency training programs were moving in a direction to require that to be certified and eligible to obtain one's license and specialty, such as OB/GYN, one could be forced to receive training in performing abortions. The Congress has a long-established track record of supporting the rights of conscience on this very, very controversial issue. There are many, many Americans, including many physicians, who feel as I do that abortion is morally wrong, that it is killing the unborn, and that nobody should be forced to learn how to do an abortion if they do not want to do it, and, importantly, no health care entity should be forced to perform abortions. The original statute that was enacted over the signature of Bill Clinton was language that was actually put forward in the Senate by Senators Coates and Snow. I will point out that she is pro-choice, and she stated at the time that she wanted to protect the rights of conscience, that people who feel strongly that abortion is killing should not be forced to have to do it. Now, that statute had some language in it that I thought was sufficiently broad. It says health care entities, and I thought a hospital was a health care entity. But the people on the left who are trying to advance the abortion agenda have managed to get courts to interpret that hospitals are not health care entities and that being that they receive Federal dollars and other State dollars, they could, and in the State of Alaska they have done this, be interpreted to be required to perform abortions. If my colleagues do not think the left is trying to advance their agenda, I have this here in my hand. They have since taken this off their Web site. This is Maryland NARAL. It says: ``For these reasons Maryland NARAL is launching the Hospital Provider Project. The goal of the Hospital Provider Project is to increase access to abortion services by requiring Maryland hospitals to provide abortion and other reproductive health care.'' So that is really what this debate is about. They have found a loophole in the Federal law and they are trying to drive a truck through it. Eighty-five percent of hospitals in America today avoid this issue by not providing abortion services and a pro-abortion crowd of the court wants to drag them into court and interpret a statute which we thought protected the right of conscience in such a way that it would force them to have to provide this. I want to touch on two things that people keep bringing up. Number one, this is going to interfere with all the Federal dollars. I do not know what else to say, other than that is a total misinterpretation of the statute. The interpretation that we have received is that, and these are decisions that have come out of the administration, that it will not interfere. The other thing I want to comment on is this business about contraception. Contraception is not defined by the FDA as abortion. The morning-after pill is not defined by the FDA as abortion. It is defined as contraception. It is something different. So to interpret this statute to claim that it is going to prohibit access is to take essentially a religious entity's doctrine and put that into the statute, and it is just not there. It is not in the language. So I know people can disagree on interpretations of law. When I look at this law and the legal scholars that I have had analyze it, they assert that that is a falsehood. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to rise in strong support of this bill and reiterate some of the points that I made in my comments in the debate on the rule. This bill has been characterized by its opponents as an assault on their side of the issue, the pro-abortion or pro- choice side. I would argue very, very strongly that that is very much not the case. The law as I interpret it is very, very clear. It seeks to clarify the conscience clause that was enacted by this body and signed into law by the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in 1996. This dispute arose over a disagreement surrounding a requirement that physicians in training, residents, be forced to learn how to do abortions to get their accreditation and get their license to practice obstetrics and gynecology when in fact they were personally opposed to doing abortions. For most Members of the House, that was a no-brainer. If you are pro-life, why should we the government have laws and regulations that would force a physician in training to have to learn to do a procedure that they find morally and ethically repugnant? Under the provisions of the law, and I have a copy of the law right here, we encompassed it to include health care entities. I interpreted that at the time, I was here, I voted for it, that it would also include some obvious health care entities like hospitals and HMOs. But under the aggressive attempt on the part of the pro-choice community to expand the availability of abortion procedures in America, they have used the courts, which has always been their traditional tool to advance their agenda, to expand or redefine the law such that a hospital or an HMO is not a health care entity. What we seek to do in this statute is to just clarify that act. To define us as engaging in this great assault on Row v. Wade, when really what we are trying to do is protect freedom of conscience or freedom of choice, to me, is just not an accurate interpretation of it. As far as some of these claims and assertions that we will prevent people from being counseled, if you look at the language, it is very, very clear. If any health care entity voluntarily elects not only to train people to do abortions, but as well to perform them, or refer for an abortion, that is not infringed by this act. I want to clarify another very, very important thing, I know this is a very sensitive issue for a lot of Members in the body, and this is this debate about contraception. There have been people who have come to this floor today and tried to assert that the language in this bill would bar the provision of contraception services in many institutions that are already providing it. Please show me in the statute where you find that interpretation. I think it could be described as a tremendous misinterpretation or a tremendous stretch of the imagination. The provision of contraceptive services has never been defined as abortion in Federal statute, nor has emergency contraception, what has commonly been interpreted as the morning-after pill. Now, some religious groups may interpret that as abortion, but we make no reference in this statute to religious groups or their definitions; and under the current FDA policy that is considered contraception, and it is not affected at all by this statute. This law, in my opinion, represents a very clear attempt to prevent what I consider to be the extreme agenda of the pro-abortion community to try to advance what they want to do. We have had many people come down to the floor quoting from a NARAL Web site about their agenda, which is to force many institutions, and 85 percent of hospitals in America today do not provide abortion services, to force them to do that, using current Federal laws and statutes. Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation, I think, is very clear. It is not ambiguous. Its intent is to protect the freedom of these institutions to not engage in this procedure. I ask Members to support this bill.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I just want to introduce for point of clarification, there have been statements made about how this is not an issue that should apply to health care plans or insurance companies, and I just want to state the case of Fidelis Health Care of New York. This is a Catholic archdiocese of New York cooperative managed health care plan. Immediately after it was started, Family Planning Advocates of New York, FPA they are called; they are an affiliate of Planned Parenthood International, pursued aggressive action against this HMO. They have called upon the State Health Department to ``increase its monitoring of Fidelis informational and referral processes concerning reproductive health care,'' and they are supporting legislation in the New York legislature to force them to provide abortion counseling. So what we are talking about is we have a Catholic doctor in a Catholic hospital with a Catholic nurse, all of them are pro-life, and these people are wanting to go in there and use the force of government to say you have to do this.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Let me just start out by saying, one of the things my father taught me when I was a kid growing up is when people call you names, often the case is they have a problem themselves with the name they are calling you, and we have been called extreme and radical for doing this. I really take offense at that. I believe very strongly all we are trying to do in this bill is to just clarify the intent of the Congress 6 years ago when it originally passed this conscience clause language, and it is the left, it is the pro-abortion left that is trying to do an end run through the courts around this. Now, this motion to recommit is a classic gutting motion to recommit. It invalidates the entire intent of the bill. It has language that says the statute shall not be construed as authorizing any institution to withhold medically appropriate information or services from a patient. So in other words, we are back to square one. The original intent of the law was it covered hospitals because it referred to them as health care entities, and now we have the courts arguing that hospitals are somehow not health care entities, and they should have to provide these services or referrals. What they are arguing for here is we have a Catholic hospital, pro- life, they hire a doctor, and the doctor gets in there and he decides he wants to start referring his patients for an abortion. If it is the position of the hospital that that violates their position, they do not want that policy in place, they can enforce it under the conscience clause that we are trying to enact under this law. They have a gutting amendment here that essentially would make it impossible for those institutions, many of which are run by the church, many of which are not run by the church; I want to just underscore this. There are a lot of hospitals that are secular and they do not want to do abortions, and yet what this amendment would effectively do is make it possible for anybody to do abortion counseling, abortion referral, even abortion procedures in hospitals that do not want to do it. Furthermore, it goes on to say that this law will not abrogate any States rights. So essentially, if the State wants to act very aggressively, statutes that would allow abortion procedures in all hospitals in the State, that this would not be prohibited. This clearly violates the intent of many people in this body, people on both sides of this issue. We had a lot of people who are pro-life and a lot of people who are pro-choice who supported this provision.