Lankford Stands with Every Woman, for Every Child

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CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) spoke on the Senate floor once again today in support of life, ahead of the 2024 March for Life in Washington, DC.

As the Senate’s most pro-life member, Lankford has been a leading voice for the protection of life. He recently receivedan A+ score on the latest Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America National Pro-Life Scorecard, a tool for holding members of Congress accountable for their legislative records on life and highlighting leadership in the fight to protect unborn children and their mothers. In 2023, he took to the Senate floor to share his full and unwavering support for life in our nation and to ask his fellow Senators a simple question: when does life begin?

Lankford led the fight to protect Oklahoma’s health care funding from the Biden Administration’s pro-abortion agenda. He sounded the alarm on a rule that targets funding for pregnancy centers and the Administration’s push to impose an abortion mandate on employers. 

Lankford challenged attempts to use taxpayer dollars indented for COVID relief on abortions or to pay for abortions for minors at the border. He introduced the Women’s Public Health and Safety Act to exclude abortion providers from Medicaid funds and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act to establish a permanent prohibition on federal funding for abortion.

Ahead of a decision from the Supreme Court on the deregulation of chemical abortions, Lankford introduced the Support and Value Expectant (SAVE) Moms and Babies Act to fight efforts by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to loosen restrictions on the use of chemical abortion drugs. Lankford also put pressure on pharmacies to stop distributing DIY abortion drugs, and called out the Department of Justice for failing to enforce long-standing laws prohibiting the mailing of abortion drugs. He recently published an op-ed detailing the dangers of chemical abortions, as well as an episode of The Breakdown with James Lankford podcast on the same topic.

Lankford also introduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to protect infants who survived an abortion attempt. 

Transcript

It’s January, it’s cold outside. In fact, it’s snowing outside here in Washington, DC, today and tomorrow. It’s late January, which means what it has meant for the last five decades: pro-life Americans will gather by the hundreds of thousands in Washington, DC, and will converge on this city to say, ‘We think every child is valuable.’

Now, I have to tell you every March that I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot, they are all cold. They don’t all have snow. This one will. And I’ll bet it won’t dampen the spirits for a lot of students, teachers, moms, dads, little ones who come to say we’re an American and we think life is valuable. We think children are precious. We think this is an important issue.

Now we haven’t always had a March for Life. We had one for 50 years actually. It’s interesting enough when Nellie Grey and other pro-life leaders organized the March for Life in 1973 after the Roe v. Wade decision, they were recognizing an anomaly in the American law, because our nation has been a nation for only 250 years, but abortion was only mandated in every state and in everyplace during that short time period under Roe v. Wade.

For the other two centuries of our nation, this issue about the value of life was decided in every state and among the people. That’s what’s occurred again. We still have abortion in America. It’s happening all over the country. But individuals are rising up and saying, ‘Our state, our leaders, and even this Congress needs to have a conversation about when is a child a child? And when does a child become valuable in our culture and when is a child disposable in our culture? And which child can be disposed of and which child is celebrated?’

I love this side-by-side picture here, and I don’t know if you can really see it. But this is an ultrasound in the womb with this baby with arms over her head and then a baby sleeps like that. In fact, both of my daughters often slept like that. We called them touchdown positions when their hands were raised up over their heads like that. But it’s kind of funny to be able to see this picture of a baby sleeping in the womb just like the same way they would sleep in a crib. You know why? Because there’s is no difference. That’s a baby then, that’s a baby then. The only difference is time.

The only difference between myself now and myself nine months ago was time—nine months of time. The only difference between this child in the womb and that child laying in a crib is just a little bit of time. And there are literally millions of Americans that have this very simple perspective, that we should, as the March says this year, we should march with every woman for every child, that we should stand up for those individuals and to be able to honor those families. 

We march in support of pregnancy resource centers. Those folks who are walking with women through very difficult decisions and through very hard moments. There was a recent study done on pregnancy resource centers done just in 2022, that found that $359 million were donated to individuals through pregnancy resource centers all over the country. Those are diapers and wipes, those are baby formula, that’s car seats, that’s free ultrasounds, that’s free pregnancy tests, that’s after-abortion support, and sometimes it’s stroller and clothes.

The majority of those individuals that work in these resource centers are heroes—they’re volunteers that give their time. They have full-time jobs, their tasks, their families, and other places, but they value every single child, even the children they don’t know enough, that they would donate their time, money, and effort just to be able to say that child is just as valuable as that child. And that, in America, we shouldn’t pick and choose which child is precious and which child is disposable, we should just say they all are. This Administration has been exceptionally aggressive on taking on this issue of life. Pushing back from the very beginning.

For instance, there’s a nurse that was in the process of — of dealing with her employer because this nurse had informed the hospital that she worked with that she was personally opposed to abortion, morally personally opposed to abortion, and she was told you don’t have to participate in abortion, you are protected under the law that individuals can’t be compelled to work with abortions. One day she had a doctor and nurse compel her to participate in an abortion or she would lose her job. She was not able to have her conscience without losing her job, in the early days of the Biden Administration, that litigation was dismissed, saying to her: ‘We understand that it is federal law that you should have conscience protections, but we don’t agree with it your opinion. You don’t get conscience protections, only people we agree with.’ That’swrong.

In my state funding from this Administration was cut off in my state for AIDs testing, for screenings, breast cancer evaluations. That money was federal dollars allocated in my state to help in health care in rural communities. That money was cut off by this Administration. Do you want to know why? Because our state would not promote abortion, and the determination was made, you won’t get federal assistance for AIDs testing or for breast cancer screening or for assistance in your county health departments, we’re going to cut your funds off for that if your state does do not fund abortion, and our state said those kids are valuable and we will find a way to do it on our own, but this Administration is cutting off funding for AIDs testing people in our state’s position on the value of life. This Administration has just proposed to cut off Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to pro-life centers.

As I mentioned before, some of these pregnancy resource centers give out food, clothing assistance, they have been part of the TANF program for years, but this Administration said if you assist families but don’t promote abortions, you can’t actually assist families, you’re not one of us, literally telling those Americans, ‘You don’t agree with this Administration so you don’t count because you’re trying to protect life, we won’t help you do that.’ 

This Administration is currently trying to use the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act to force doctors to provide abortions even though that law that they’re using specifically and explicitly protects pregnant moms and unborn children, but they’re currently trying to twist it the other way.

This Administration is currently fighting an issue on chemical abortions. Chemical abortions that have been around for years, two-drug cocktail that the first drug actually disconnects the child from the connection in the womb and starves them. The second pill causes that delivery, causes the contraction of the uterus and they have an abortion at home. A do it yourself kit at home. That, for years, has been a very specific issue, only a specific time period that you could actually use that drug cocktail knowing if the child was just a few weeks older, it causes a real danger to the mom or if this was an ectopic pregnancy, it could take the life of the mom or if the mom had a certain blood type, it could cause the mom not to have children in the if future. So in the past a physician would have to connect with that mom before getting the drug cocktail.

This Administration has continued to fight to say, ‘No, they don’t need to see a physician. They can just get it mailed to them.’ And in a situation with an ectopic pregnancy, the side effects from having the do it yourself abortion at home, may look similar to the side effects of an ectopic pregnancy, but there’s no way to know until you get an ultrasound. This Administration is aggressive of trying to provide more abortions in this country, but why would they put women’s lives at risk to make it convenient to be able to have an abortion?

It’s January, so we’re talking about this issue of abortion because the March for Life is happening. But there are literally millions of Americans all around the country that they’re going to be able to continue to talk about this issue of life in every way that they can because they look at these two children literally a few weeks apart and they think both of them are valuable, and I don’t think that’s a radical concept.

We live in a culture in America that is committed to tolerance, acceptance and diversity, but it seems to be so except for every area except for that child. That child doesn’t get to have tolerance, acceptance, and be welcomed into our culture. That child is sometimes determined to be disposable. And I want to say to the millions of Americans that see both these kids and both think they’re valuable continue to be able to love people, to be able to walk alongside those moms, to be able to encourage in every way we can. As we talk about this issue, more and more people will look at these two pictures and say, ‘You’re right. They both look like children to me, why don’t we treat them equal?’

That’s what we should be all about as a country, and that’s why we march in every cold January.

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