We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life -- the unborn -- without diminishing the value of all human life.  If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it.  I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.  The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being.  Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life.  They want to pick and choose which individuals have value.

As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the "quality of life" ethic.  I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future.  As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life.  The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn.  I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life.  It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not.  Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue.

We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place.  Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain.  Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide.  The time to stop both is now.

It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings.  We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier "separate-but-equal" decision.  As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy.  Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers.

We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others.  We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide.  My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.