The following are Rep. Chris Smith’s remarks as prepared for delivery at the 2024 March for Life
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On behalf of my wife Marie and I—and all of us—thank you, Jeanne Mancini, for your extraordinary leadership.
At a New Jersey pregnancy resource center dinner, two women—through tears of joy—expressed their deep and abiding gratitude for the incredible love, respect, and care that persuaded them to reverse their decision to abort their babies.
They spoke of the pressure they had felt to abort.
They spoke of how desperate—even hopeless—they felt.
Until they met the director of the pregnancy resource center who reached out to both of them in a gentle and nonjudgemental way.
They chose life—and thanked God, the director, and the pregnancy resource center for helping them avert the loss of their baby’s lives.
Then, two teenaged girls took to the podium and spoke about their lives—school, sports, friends—and their reverence for the sanctity of all human life.
Near the end of their remarks, they turned towards the director of the Center and said if you didn’t persuade our moms to let us live, “we’d be dead.”
There are more than 2,700 pregnancy resource centers throughout the United States—each and every one of them an oasis of love, compassion, empathy, respect, and care for both mothers and their precious children.
Americans agree. The new Marist national poll released yesterday (January 18th) found that 83% of all Americans including 75% of Democrats support—I say again support—pregnancy resource centers.
They—like all of us in this great human rights movement—stand with every woman and for every child.
We reject the violence of abortion—dismemberment, child beheadings, and abortion pills that literally starve the baby to death.
As all of you know, the infamous holdings in Roe v Wade and Casey were reversed by the brilliant Dobbs decision—conveying to lawmakers at the federal, state and local levels the authority to regulate or prohibit abortion.
We are greatly encouraged and filled with hope and resolve.
Lives are being saved.
Despite serious challenges in some states like my own, twenty-five states have one or more strong gestational limits on abortion that are either in effect or are being litigated in the courts. We are making progress.
This week under our great Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership, two new important pro-life bills authored by two courageous lawmakers—Michelle Fischbach and Ashley Hinson—passed the House.
Congresswoman Michelle Fischbach’s legislation prohibits Biden’s new policy proposal that discriminates against pregnancy resource centers.
The bill—H.R 6918, Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act—ensures that pregnancy resource centers cannot be excluded or restricted from receiving TANF funding as proposed in a rule by the President.
H.R. 6914, the Pregnant Students’ Rights Act authored by Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, requires colleges and universities to communicate and distribute information informing pregnant students of their rights, accommodations, and resources available to them.
She said: “It’s unacceptable that pregnant women on college campuses are often pressured to have an abortion. My bill ensures young women are empowered to choose life and create the best future for themselves and their child.”
Tragically, President Biden—the Abortion President—has weaponized the entire federal bureaucracy to aggressively promote abortion on demand including a full court press to force taxpayers to pay for it.
Last Congress—with President Biden’s absolute support—the Democrats in the House of Representatives twice passed the radical abortion on demand until birth actthat not would only legalize abortion for all nine months of pregnancy, but would nullify every pro-life policy ever enacted.
Think of it—all nine months. We can’t allow that to happen.
That extremist legislation poses an existential threat to countless women and children.
The Biden Administration and some governors and lawmakers continue to smear and misrepresent the noble work of pregnancy resource centers.
We can’t allow that to happen, either.
The pro-abortion culture of denial—a modern-day flat earth society—denies, devalues, and disrespects unborn baby girls and boys and trivializes the harm suffered by women.
The United States—and the world—must more fully recognize the breathtaking miracle of the newly created life of an unborn child and that women deserve better than abortion.
