January 23, 1980 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 517 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS A LIBERAL AGAINST ABORTION "My. liberal friends in the ACLU would ceeding unabated. The White Rouse have jumped all over the Dred Scott deci­ and many elements of the press are sion, which h.eld that a slave was less than a trying every angle possible to prove HON. JOH1J G. FARY human being. Well. it is my opinion that that the Communist Chinese are not OF ILLINOIS one day we'll look back at Roe 1'8. Wade [the 1973 Supreme Court ruling upholding the the aggressive and warlike people the IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES legality of abortion] as our Dred Seott deci­ Soviets have proven themselves to be. Wednesday, January 23, 1980 sion. What the two things have _in common One recent example was in the Oil is the attempt to deal with social problems Daily: e Mr. FARY. Mr. Speaker, . distin­ by defining people as less t:tian human." guished colleagues, in the wake of yes­ Images of the Chinese Communists as For Smith, arguments about the viability-­ "mass murderers" hinder understanding as terday's March for Life, which I of fetuses are beside the point, having more much as misinterpreted terms such as wholeheartedly support, I would like to do with the state of the medical art than "purge," which in the Chinese political con­ to share with you an article by Wil­ with humanity. While he acknowledges text does not imply Stalin-like executions, liam Raspberry that appeared on the being uncomfortable in, the presence of but rather, removal from party or official op-ed page of today's Washington many of his fellow . right-to-lifers, whose positions and "thought reform.'' The em­ Post. It illustrates the motivations of politics he generally abhors,. he goes even phasis in Chinese politics has generally liberals who are beginning to join the further than some of them in his definition been on rehabili4ition rather than elimina­ of human life. His view is that human life tion ... ranks of the prolife movement in in­ exists from the moment of conception, and creasing numbers. So-called prochoice anything deliberately done to interrupt the About 66 million dead Chinese may advocates often accuse prolifers of development of that human being is mur­ differ with this author's assessment of being unreasonably conservative and der. the benevolence of the Chinese Com~ opposed to policies that make life bet­ He accepts abortion when the choice is be­ munists. So would Amnesty Interna­ ter tor those who are already born. I tween saving the fetus or the mother, but tional. In its yearly report on human think this is an unfair accusation. that's as far as he'll go. It makes no differ­ rights violations in the world this i,n­ is ence to him whether the fetus is deformed However, my answer to them the or unwanted or the product of rape or in­ ternational advocate for civil liberties last paragraph of· the article . which cest. It's still a human life~ <He's also op­ described the. numbers of deaths dur­ states, in effect, that no ·prolifer has posed to capital punishment and. less ada­ ing the purge of the "Gang of Four." ever changed his or her mind and said mantly, to warJ The-report specifically cites· eight ex­ that life is not sacred while opposition He knows that.many pro-choice advocates ecutions of "counterrevolutionary to the prollfe movement is waning. have reached their. positions for non-selfish leaders.. in Hangzhou in 1978 .as. well We, their representatives, should take reasons but insists that "people often do as other deaths in Zhejiang Province. note that life is valued all over our dumb things in the name of good." One person, He Chunshu was execut­ country and in all political and social "I consider my position very liberal," he said. "A lot of my liberal friends who are in ed in Canton for· writing a counter­ segments of society. the anti-nuclear movement. will acknowl­ revolutionary leaflet. This hardly T~e article follows: edge that there are a lot of uncertainties sounds like the pastoral ·scene ' de­ A LIBERAL AGAINST ABORTION about nuclear energy, but thet' still insist scribed by so many commentators Bill Smith is; in some ways, your quintes­ that. we ought to .err on the side of safety today. sential liberal. He's pro-civil rights;. he's and shut 'em [nuclear plants] down. Why During 1979 a number of Chinese deeply moved by the plight of the children; can't they reach the same conclusion with risked death or imprisonment to tell he's pro-women's rights; he's been living for regard to abortion clinics? the world of the horrors of commu­ two years with a woman he's not ·married to; "I remember what one of the Save-the­ Whale people said, when they cut open a nism in China. Most of the writers he's in favor· of the Equal Rights Amend­ ended up in prison as Teng Hsiao-ping ment. dead whale and found a rather large baby But he's opposed to abortion. He is almost whale . inside: 'Those SOBs killed two suppressed· their activities.· One of the fanatically opposed to abortion. whales, not one." Why can't they look at more prominent dissidents was Wei When I talked with him, the 30-year-old human beings the same way?" Ching-sheng. As a pati;iot who loves Smith had just completed a seven-month Smith doesn't really expect his arguments his nation he despaired over its decline walk from San Diego to Washington, thning to move the pro-choicers, any more than he into tyranny under communism. He bis trek to get here for yesterday's anti­ expects to be moved by their complaint that viewed the reforms of Teng as just an­ abortion march and rally. men, being biologically immune from preg­ other cover for oppression; During the And while he was waiting for the march, nancy, shouldn't sound off about abortion. But he does expect that his point of view period of Democracy Wall in Peking he managed to get himself arrested for dem­ Wei published a series of pieces ap­ onstrating against abortion at the U.S. Su­ will,·over time, become the prevailing view­ preme· Court. possibly leading to an anti-abortion consti­ pealing for real democracy to come to How does a long-haired, agnostic liberal tutional amendment. China. For this act he was sentenced find himself allied with the strait-laced "It's my impression that this is a one-way to 15 years in prison. At a time when God-fearing conservatives who are in the street," he said. "I keep hearing about pro­ the world is decrying the arrest and forefront of the right-to-life movement? abortion people who change their minds, internal exile of Anatoly Shcharansky but I never hear about anti-abortion people If you've got a few minutes, Smith_ will changing theirs. All the movement seems to we should realize that the inhumanity rattle off . the appropriate cliches: "You be in the pro-life direction."• of communism knows no· national don't solve social problems by killing peo­ boundaries. This is an important point ple." "My pre-born brothers and sisters are to ponder as the Congress tries to deal .persons." "If you think we're talking about a blob of tissue, look in the womb and see A PLEA FOR DEMOCRACY IN with the Soviet threat in the world what you find." CHINA and as a bill to reward China with If you've got longer to talk, he will ac­ most-favored-nation status comes to · knowledge that he worked out his argu­ HON. JOHN M. ASHBROOK the floor. tam inserting into the REC~ ments mostly after he had reached his con­ OF OHIO ORD the last appeal made by Wei be­ clusion. Maybe that's the way it is with the fore his arrest: rest of us on this emotion-laden i5¥1e. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES DEMOCRACY OR A NEW DIC'l'ATORSHIP? Whatever triggered his present position­ Wednesday, January 23, .1980 and he isn't sure just what it was-he sees <An editorial in T'an-so <Exploration> mag­ his anti-abortion stance as consistent with e Mr. ASHBROOK. Mr.· Speaker, the azine, March 25, 1979-Translated .by his generally Uber~ vtews. It's the pro­ propaganda barrage for the granting Chou Hsing-chlh) choice liberals who are inconsistent, he be­ of most-favored-nation status for the [Editor~s Note: The sudtlen arrest and dis­ lieves. Communists in China has been pro- appearance of Wei Ching-sheng (Wei Jing- e This ..bullet,,. symbol identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by the Member on die floor .. 518 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS January 23, 1980 sheng), editor of T'an-so <Exploration>, on people's previous confidence in him in order The people gather to seek redress of their March 29, 1979, is no surprise to us. Rather, to oppose the democratic movement. He has grievances, to air their sufferings and to de­ it is the inevitable fate of those who fight foisted· all kinds. of charges on the democrat- mand democracy. The· people demonstrate for freedom· and civil rights under Chinese ic movement, attempting to blame it for the to oppose persecution and dictatorship: This Communism. Wei's case has attracted the failure of Hua and Teng's policies to salvage illustrates that their life is lacking democra­ attention of news media and· scholars of China's economy and productivity.