Rep. Chris Smith addresses March for Life, disparages Obama’s “empathy deficit”

Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2008 / 14:04 pm

“Today, 35 years after the infamous Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion on demand throughout pregnancy, we mourn the estimated 50 million innocent girls and boys whose lives were cut off by abortion—a staggering loss of children’s lives, equal to six times the total number of people living in my home state of New Jersey,” said Representative Chris Smith as he addressed participants at the March for Life this morning.

"Someday future generations of Americans will look back on us and wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with the capacity to protect and enhance vulnerable human life, could have instead so aggressively promoted death to children and the exploitation of women by abortion both here and overseas," Smith continued.

The New Jersey representative laid some of the blame at the feet of "some of our most prominent politicians and media icons" who "often spoke of human or civil rights, while precluding virtually all protection to the most persecuted minority in the world today, unborn children."

He also took note of Senator Barack Obama's criticism on Sunday of Americans being deficient in morals and in empathy for others. Senator Obama also called on Americans to be their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. 

"Can Senator Obama not see, appreciate or understand that the abortion culture that he and others so assiduously promote lacks all empathy for unborn children—be they Black, White, Latino or Asian—and is at best, profoundly misguided when it comes to mothers?" asked Rep. Smith.

"Why does dismembering a child with sharp knives, pulverizing a child with powerful suction devices or chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals, fail to elicit so much as a scintilla of empathy, moral outrage, mercy or compassion by America’s liberal elite?" 

"Abortion destroys the life of our “brothers and sisters” and the pro-abortion movement is the quintessential example of an 'Empathy Deficit,'" Smith told the gathered pro-life marchers.

To read the full text of Rep. Smith's speech click here