Topic: Abortion
Senator: Coburn
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
Contents
COBURN: As I mentioned in my opening statement, I'm a practicing physician, kind of an old-time G.P. I've delivered 4,000 babies. I take care of people at the end of life, at the beginning of life.
In all 50 states, death is recognized and defined as the irreversible cessation of the brain and heart activity.
Do you have any reason to dispute that?
ROBERTS: I don't know the medical terms or definitions, but no. I mean, if that's the law in the states, that's not to say that it has any particular legal significance...
COBURN: Right. I'm not asking you about legal significance.
Would you agree that the opposite of being dead is being alive?
ROBERTS: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
I don't mean to be overly cautious in answering it.
(LAUGHTER)
COBURN: You know I'm going somewhere. One of the problems I have is coming up with just the common sense and logic that if brain wave and heartbeat signifies life, the absence of them signifies death, then the presence of them certainly signifies life.
And to say it otherwise, logically is schizophrenic. And that's how I view a lot of the decisions that have come from the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion.
And I won't pressure you on this issue. I know you can't. But for the listeners of this hearing, if, in fact, life is the presence of a heartbeat and brain wave, it's important for everybody in the country to know that at 16 days post-conception, a heartbeat is present; and that at 41 days, right now, we can assure ourselves that brain activity and brain waves are present. And as the technology improves, we're going to see that come earlier and earlier.
I make that point because so many of the decisions of the Supreme Court have been made in a vacuum of the scientific knowledge of what life is, when personhood is, when it begins, when it doesn't, when it exists, when it doesn't.
And it belies the scientific facts and medical facts that are out there today.
And so that was for your information and my ability to put forth a philosophy that I believe would solve a lot of the controversy in this country.
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