James Lankford Asks: Will We Protect Animals, but Not Children?

By Rod Anderson, CP Cartoonist Thursday, July 23, 2015

"Mr. President, I'd like to take just a moment to be able to speak about a subject that's very, very difficult for me to speak about, and quite frankly difficult for a lot of Americans to talk about and hear about. It connects to all of us, in extremely personal ways.

Let me set some context. Not long ago a group of animal rights activists gathered around a research facility, a research facility that was using animals for their testing. The activists gathered around the facility and chanted and had signs that they held up saying "it's not science, it's violence." And other signs that said "animal lives are their right, we have just begun to fight." As they protested to protect the lives of the animals that were being used in that facility for research.

Now, I understand their frustration there. But let me put it into context of some things that came out this week. We learned that this week an organization called Planned Parenthood is using children that are aborted and sending the bodies of those aborted children to research facilities, sometimes for sale, different body parts, to be used in research. These are not mice, these are not lab rats, these are children. Children that have gone through the process of a horrific abortion.

This morning in an appropriations hearing, that the president and I both were in, we had extensive conversation about the rights of orca whales. And this protracted conversation went on and on — that many people were also connected to — about the rights of orca whales and the care for them. Then we had a protracted conversation about horse slaughter and how horses would be humanely put down. But in the middle of all that conversation happening today, there were children still being aborted with an instrument reaching into a mother, tearing apart a child but carefully protecting certain organs because those organs would be valuable to sell."