"Looking Beyond the Cheap Sophistry of the Abortion Industry".

Editor's note. The following are excerpts from the remarks of Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) presented at the 25th annual March for Life.

The enlightening national debate over partial-birth abortion has accelerated the process of exposing the simple truth that abortion is violence against children and that the abortion movement routinely exploits, injures, and lies to women.

The 25-year coverup of this national scandal is over. As movements go, the pro-abortionists have lost credibility. They have been unmasked and shown to have engaged in a grand deception -- they have lied through their teeth. Our prayer for Abortion President Bill Clinton and the Abortion Vice President Al Gore and all those blinded by the abortion industry: learn from Dr. Nathanson -- have the courage, compassion, and intellectual honesty to get off the death ship and join the crusade for life. Like the Titanic, the pro-abortionists are going down. Don't, Mr. President, let your legacy be "Abortion President."

For the first time in 25 years, Americans are looking beyond the cheap sophistry and self-serving rhetoric of the abortion industry, and they are connecting the dots. If it's shocking and inhumane to jam scissors and a vacuum hose into the head of a partially delivered baby, why is it any less violent, shocking, and inhumane to dismember the bodies of children with surgical knives, or to dislodge and destroy babies with hideous suction machines (20 to 30 times more powerful than a household vacuum cleaner), or to pump dangerous chemical compounds, including extremely high-concentrated salt water, into the unborn babies' environment so as to poison the child?

Today we mourn the untimely deaths of more than 36 million babies -- a holocaust of staggering proportion. Today we remember the 36 million kids who will never take their first steps or thrill their parents with their first day of school or play soccer, basketball, or baseball. For every two young people in America and at this March for Life, a third person is missing because an entire generation has had no protective law to ensure its safety.

Congress reconvenes next week and I ask your prayers and lobbying to stop the Clinton Administration and their Republican and Democratic friends in Congress from giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and like-minded groups who seek to topple pro-life laws in foreign countries.

As you know, at home, Planned Parenthood operates the largest chain of abortion mills and performs or refers for over 230,000 abortions each year -- a staggering loss of life. Planned Parenthood lobbies and litigates against even the most modest safeguards like parental consent laws.

Overseas, Planned Parenthood employs the same deceitful tactics they use here, putting millions of kids' lives at risk in the 100 countries that currently protect their unborn children.

Please, tell your congressmen and senators to support the Mexico City Policy on population control funding -- so taxpayers will no longer subsidize the overseas abortion industry.

Finally, a special word to our young people who march today in record numbers. Think about running for Congress someday. Despite what you hear, public service can and certainly should be honorable, ethical, and clean.

You can make the difference.

Right now, the task in the Republican Party is to make safeguarding the precious lives of unborn children and their mothers a priority....

...Except for an important remnant [of pro-life Democrats] in Congress, it is pitiful that in 1998 unborn baby girls and boys are simply not of any importance to the Democratic Party. They are the throw-aways.

To our young, I encourage you to pray, fast, and get involved in politics. Our nation needs you.