Rick Santorum

I started my clock.

So thank you very much, Robert.

I appreciate it, and I've tremendously enjoyed the opportunity we've had to spend some time together.

And you've already blessed uh Karen and me and our family tremendously.

Uh I think it was the second time I met uh Robert, he handed me a book about tithing.

And um I know for you guys it was the first, but for me it was the second.

Um and it's been a tremendous gift.

We uh from that moment we read that book, we have tithed and we've been tithing, and it's it is such a blessing, it is such a gift.

Thank you so much.

I mean, thank you.

Uh I am here, this is my notes.

I made I was sitting up there uh for uh for the service this morning and got one of these pamphlets and started making a couple of notes, and um at the top of every speech that I give, I write two letters.

You can sort of see them in a circle up there.

HS Holy Spirit.

And I always say a prayer to the Holy Spirit and ask him to give me his words and to help you hear the words that I mean for you to hear, not necessarily what I say, but that he means for you to hear.

And so if you don't like the speech today, take it up with him, not me.

I uh it's all it's all him.

So uh I just uh listening to that music, and I've what an incredible experience uh these these uh praised singers are up here.

Uh I just um and feeling the spirit in this place, and knowing before I came here the spirit in this place, uh I just I I felt like I had to come here to experience that, but also to challenge you.

Because our country is hurting right now.

Our country is hurting, and in and in many respects, I was criticized uh for being a candidate for president who spoke a lot about faith and spoke about evil.

I've even given speeches where I talked about Satan.

And I I talk about it in terms of that this country is like any country.

It's like our own lives and our own families.

We struggle, good and evil.

And I know a lot of you feel like I do that you may not be winning that battle right now.

That there are things that are happening in this country that are, well, going away from the things that made this country what it is.

We have less people today who say they believe in God than any time in the history of this country.

We have marriage rates at the lowest level ever.

Forty years ago, 70% of people aged 18 to 59 were married.

Now it's 51%.

We have out-of-woodlock births at an all-time high, approaching 40%.

We see a poverty of spirit and a poverty of well, economic poverty, yes, but it's a deeper poverty, it's a cultural poverty, a societal poverty.

We see an assault now for the first time in our country on freedom of religion.

And when I hear you worship and worship so loudly and shout so loudly, I know you can do so within the comfort of your church, but can you do it when you go outside the church anymore?

And so, what I'm asking all of you committed believers is to step up and step out.

We need you.

We need you to be filled with the Holy Spirit here, but don't keep it here.

One of the songs you just sang, it was the last one, The Church Will Rise.

I believe that.

I believe that.

But who is the church?

G.K.

Chesterson, who's a famous author about a turn of the century, was asked to write an article for a London magazine.

And the title of it he was supposed to write was What's Wrong with the World?

He submitted his essay as follows.

What's wrong with the world?

I am, respectfully submitted G.K.

Chesterson.

We can see all the maladies and all the problems in the world, but what's wrong with the world?

I am.

We have an obligation, each one of us.

And so when I wanted to come here and talk to you tonight, I I didn't want to give a speech about the world and about all the things that are happening.

I wanted to talk about what's wrong with the world.

Me.

So I'm gonna talk about me and my journey, and share with you all my failures.

Well, not all my failures.

We don't have enough time for that.

I'm limited.

But share with you my journey.

And hopefully share with you and inspire you that someone is broken, someone is inept and wayward.

And if he just continues to love Jesus Christ and pursue his will, amazing things can happen through this imperfect vessel.

I'm gonna start my journey with my wife Karen, because before that, we really don't have enough time to talk about all my failures.

My life today began when I met my wife.

She made me, transformed me, was my partner in understanding what love really is, was a partner in understanding what God's love really is.

Marriage is so important.

It civilizes the uncivilized male.

It does.

Men need marriage.

You women may not think so.

And a lot of you men may not think so, but we do.

And our country needs stable married relationships.

Because it gives us men a purpose.

It gives us a bond.

It gives us a vision.

And that's what it did for me.

Karen and I came from very different places, but we we joined together and we decided when we got married that neither of us were much going for church at that point in time of our lives when we first met.

But we decided once we got serious that we'd probably like to have children and what we wanted to raise our children with knowing the Lord, and so it brought us back to faith.

And we walked along that journey together.

Prior to that, I was the busiest man ever.

I have three degrees.

I have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, and an MBA, I've got a law degree.

I worked 24-7, was ambitious.

Right before I decided to, well, about the same time I met Karen, I decided to run for Congress at the age of 30 against a 14-year incumbent, given no chance to win.

Didn't matter.

I was a busy man, I was on the move, and so I ran impossibly, outspent three to one, a horrible election year.

No one else in the state won.

I won.

It was a miracle.

And the great thing about it is, the great thing about it is, I knew it.

So that's a blessing when you know that you didn't accomplish something, that there were higher powers at work.

And so, but that didn't slow me down because I I kept running again, and I got my, unlike Texas, which keeps growing, Pennsylvania was shrinking.

And we lost two congressional seats, one of them was mine.

So they put my district in three other districts and ended up running against another incumbent.

I won again.

Again, not supposed to win.

So I decided, what heck, I'm 34 years old, I'll run for the United States Senate.

So I ran again against an incumbent, no chance of winning.

I won.

But I was a busy man.

I was on a mission because I felt this is what God was calling me to do.

Because I had a newfound faith, and I was convinced this is what God's call for me was.

I remember getting to the United States Senate, and two major things happened to me.

Number one, we were doing the change of seasons, clothes, the change of seasons.

You guys don't do that down here, but up north we do.

We have clothes for the winter, clothes for the summer, spring, things like that.

So we were changing clothes, and at the time we had two children.

So we're changing out the drawers, and my wife held up a sleeper, and she looked at it, she goes, Oh, Johnny, our two-year-old, he went to bed on that every night.

And I looked at that sleeper and said, I have never seen that sleeper.

So that hit home about what I was doing that was so important.

That I wasn't home to see my children at night or to be with my wife and family.

And so I dedicated myself, okay, I got it.

I've got a six-year term now, I don't have to run for anything.

I'm gonna focus my time and energy on being a better husband and better father.

Second, I was walking down a hallway and a guy by the name of Don Nichols, who was a senator from Oklahoma, came up to me and asked me a very simple question.

And I just want to share this with you.

He said to me, hey, we have a Bible study every Thursday in the United States Senate, put on by the chaplain of the Senate.

Would you be interested in coming?

Now you'd say, well, what kind of big deal was that?

Someone walked out of their comfort zone and asked someone to know the Lord.

That simple act changed me.

Because I said, Oh, what the heck?

You know, I got six years, I got time, yeah, I have time for this.

When I was in the house, I was a busy guy, I couldn't do it.

But I went to that Bible study.

We found a great church, we moved down to Washington, and I got into the Senate, and my life began to change.

Prior to that period of time in my life, faith was something that I would occasionally do on Sunday.

But it was just sort of part of my being.

It wasn't central, it wasn't personal, it wasn't who I was, it wasn't about him, and that changed.

I was on fire.

Now I know just from listening, a lot of folks in this room are on fire.

You got a fire breather that gets you on fire here.

And I understand that fire because I had it.

And something happened, particularly in the Senate.

I always say I came to the United States Senate and I found the Lord.

Now I know people find that to be strange.

But it's true.

Through that Bible study, I started a small group.

How many people here in a small group?

Anybody?

Unbelievable.

Four United States Senators.

Three times, two or three times a week, we'd meet in the Capitol, right behind the rotunda.

There's a prayer room, there's a chapel.

And we would meet in that chapel right before our lunch for a half an hour.

No politics was discussed.

Well, I can't say no, but very little politics was discussed.

It was an accountability time of your family and your walk with the Lord.

It was unbelievable.

I had the fire, things were going great.

It's so much so that by the end of that year, this was 1995, by the end of that year, this bill came to the floor of the Senate.

Pastor Morris mentioned partial birth abortion, banning this horrific procedure.

It was a late-term abortion procedure where the child was delivered after 20 weeks, so this is a fully formed baby.

Could by and large live outside of the womb was viable or very close to viability, and the baby would be delivered all but the head and then executed as the doctor held the baby in his hand.

I reacted the same way to it.

Now I was pro-life, but I had never ever said a word in the House, my four years there, or in my ear in the Senate about abortion, because you just don't do that.

If you want to be a successful politician, you do not talk about the moral cultural issues.

You can vote the right way.

They'll give you a pass, the media, your colleagues.

But if you talk about it, if you lead on it, well, let's just put it this way.

After I started talking about the issue of abortion, my children would read the paper, and they thought, from reading the paper, my first name was Ultra.

Because you go from being the conservative senator, which they always, if you're a conservative, they always say that.

If you're a liberal, they never do.

But if you're a conservative, you know, it's Ted Kennedy and the conservative Rick Santorum.

I mean, so, but then I was the ultra-conservative.

And the ultra comes with talking about issues that have moral implications.

There's a price to be paid.

I knew it, and I stayed away from.

But I was so shocked by what I saw.

I decided to just throw caution to the wind and went down there and said my first words.

This was in December of 1995.

The bill passed, it was sent to the president, President Clinton vetoed it.

So we had an override of the president's veto.

It turned out it was not till September of the following year.

And the manager of the bill, the person whose bill it was, was up for election and he didn't want anything to do with talking about moral issues two months before an election.

So they asked someone else to take the lead.

I was a freshman member, everybody stepped back and I was standing there.

And so there I am from that being petrified of talking about this issue to leading the charge.

God was good.

It was an amazing time.

Here, I'll share one story with you that came from that event.

It was, I was debating Barbara Boxer from California.

And we were going back and forth, and I know.

You're in church.

So I'm going to read this from the end of a book that my wife wrote.

During the partial birth abortion debate, a senator was thanking Senator Boxer.

Women who had had partial birth abortions from coming forward to tell their stories.

She said they're crying.

They're crying because they don't understand how senators could take away an option.

They're crying because they don't believe that those senators truly understand what this meant for their families.

I responded.

We would be deafened by the cries of the children who are not here to cry because of this procedure.

The Washington Post described what happened next.

Quoting from the Washington Post, Republican Senator Rick Santorm turned to face the opposition.

And in a high pleading voice, I pointed to a set of drawings, drawings that showed what a partial birth abortion was, graphically, and cried out, where do we draw the line?

Some have likened this procedure to an appendectomy.

This is not an appendix, pointing to the drawing.

This is not a blob of tissue.

It's a baby.

It's a baby.

And then, Washington Post, and then impossibly, in an already hushed gallery, in one of those moments when the floor of the Senate looks like a stage set, with its small wooden desks somehow too small for the matters of hand.

The cry of a baby pierced the room.

Echoing across the chamber from an outside hall.

No one mentioned the cry.

But for a few seconds, no one spoke at all.

I was in the Senate for 12 years.

And 12 years being on the floor of the Senate, I heard a baby cry one time, that time.

Why?

Because you have to be seven years of old of age to be in the gallery of the United States Senate.

It just so happened at the moment I said those words, there was a baby crying in the hallway and a door opened right where the baby was crying from.

Be not afraid.

God will be faithful.

So I left that debate feeling, oh, we had to win, we lost.

But I still felt like we had made a difference.

I still felt great about doing what I did.

And then three days later, we were expecting our fourth child.

Three days later, we had a routine sonogram.

Karen was 20 weeks of age, just about the time they did most of the partial birth abortions.

20 weeks gestational age.

I'll never forget going in there and the sonographer going back and forth over Karen's abdomen.

We had our children with us, our three kids.

This was a joyous day.

We were going to see the first time see our baby.

And the sonographer looked over at us, the doctor looked over at us and said, Your child has a fatal defect and is going to die.

We all started crying.

We didn't know what to do.

All we wanted to do was get out of there.

We got into the car and we sat in the parking lot and cried.

I was pissed.

I had just spent the last year getting right with the big guy.

I had stepped out.

And this is what he did.

He's going to take my son.

We started to drive home and I couldn't.

I had to pull off the road.

And I was determined I wasn't going to let this happen.

I called every doctor I could think of.

We found one who would do interuterine surgery and maybe correct the defect so he could live.

We had the surgery done.

It looked like a success.

Everything went perfectly.

I'll never forget we drove to Pittsburgh back home and on our way to Karen's parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

I was out working earlier that day and I got a call.

Ricky gotta come home.

Karen has a fever.

The surgery caused an infection in her womb.

And she was in labor, and our child was going to be delivered, and he was going to die.

I'll never forget being there.

It was he's delivered alive.

There was nothing we could do.

young but we had two hours with our son Gabriel Michael and we held him and we loved if all of us could have lives where all we know is love what a life it would be later on Karen wrote she always kept the diary for all of the kids and so she just kept writing during this whole experience she always began the diary for each child at the moment she found out she was pregnant and so she kept writing and writing late into the night after this was after we lost Gabriel later on she shared those letters with her mom who had lost a child to Sid's and her mother encouraged her to publish it publish these letters to Gabriel she did I can tell you that I spent weeks if not months being angry at God Karen was angry but she poured it into these letters they published that book it sold out 25,000 copies we've got hundreds maybe thousands of letters there isn't usually a week or or so that it goes by that I don't meet someone who has read that book and it's helped heal them or even save their child who they were thinking of aborting I remember the pastor of the Senate telling to me when I was going through this anger he said to me just pray for the gift of understanding God will give you that gift of understanding just stay close to him and he did I always tell my children now if you can have as much impact on the world as your brother Gabriel has you will be a mighty warrior for the Lord I went back to work more partial birth bills more battles on the floor of the Senate fighting for welfare reform trying to help those who are poor and give restored dignity by connecting not government to benefit but people to people the Lord wants us to be our brother's keeper not to pay the government to do the job for us and so I fought I fought for true programs that would help restore dignity and value and worth and to those who are struggling and on the margins of our society.

I fought the partial birth battle over and over again we'd pass it the president would veto we'd lose again passed it the Supreme Court struck struck it down a similar bill.

Eventually we did get it passed eventually when President Bush came in and we stood up the Supreme Court and they backed down so we got it done.

So the next battle was taking on what I thought the next issue was came from a a court case here in Texas called Lawrence versus Texas which was the issue of marriage and the changing the definition of marriage I thought the abortion struggle was a battle ha I thought the media hated me because of what I did on the issue of abortion there is nothing the vitriol is unparalleled when it comes to standing up for the traditional value of marriage.

And so I did I was the author of the Federal Marriage Amendment way before anybody anybody even thought about changing the law here.

And I said we got to do it now because if we don't it's gonna change we're not 10 years or 20 years it's a year two, three.

If we got to act now, well there's a consensus and I failed but I was outspoken.

And in 2006 which was not the best election year the people of Pennsylvania sent me home and I lost my election by the largest margin of any incumbent senator in 40 years.

If you're gonna do it go big and so I was done with political life.

I mean they had more I saw more obituaries written about me than when I probably do when I do die I was dead politically and they were dancing on my grave there was a guy who's one of the big left wing activists who um billionaire one of these billionaires that funds all these left wings not George Soros but one of other ones and he announced that he's gonna make sure that there are never another Rick Santor, anybody like Rick Santorm ever elected to federal office again.

He was too dangerous.

That was perfectly fine for my wife and kids at the time I left the United States Senate I was in leadership I was fighting all these battles I was out and engaged in working my tail off and at home we were suffering.

We had six children they were doing okay but their dad was a very busy guy.

But you know what I was doing really important working as I left the house at 530 and got home at 9 or 10 every day if I got home at all.

And we were suffering also because after we had our son Patrick in 2001 wanted another child we didn't have one we had several miscarriages painful horrible miscarriages I look back and think to myself yeah that's me that's Mr go get him Mr.

take on the world because as soon as we left the United States Senate Karen got pregnant again and this time we were going to have a baby lesson learned great blessing and that blessing came around the our little girl we knew it was going to be a girl she got a little older in the womb the doctors were worried something might be wrong they couldn't put their finger on it but you know we better put you in a high risk pregnancy care.

Our baby was delivered and she looked great she was premature but very small three pounds ten ounces but she looked great doctors kept saying well let's we have to do some genetic tests and the second day after that they you know they would you know when you're there waiting you just think well what could it be?

And so you're the internet you're just flying around trying to figure out what could it be and I'll never forget looking at my daughter Bella's hands and her hands her finger her little finger and her index in her her index finger cross over top of the other two fingers and that's a marker for a syndrome called trisomy 18 trisomy 18 if you look it up in the medical literature says incompatible with life two days later we got the diagnosis they said your daughter is going to die she's lucky to be alive 90% of children with this disorder die at or before birth and of those that survive 90% do not live a year most die within weeks some months so here we were again not again but there we were and so we went back and huddled around her isolette in the ICU and prayed and just wouldn't leave her but she didn't die.

In fact she did pretty well and after 10 days the hospital said there's really not much more we can do we'll send her home on hospice care I don't know about you but the word hospice with a newborn baby just didn't sit with me.

And we sat down and we had our exit interview with the doctor and the doctor kept saying to us now you understand what you're dealing with here.

Your child's gonna die.

Yeah and so we were going through all the things that we were supposed to do to care and care for and she would probably die of respiratory failure.

That's her weak spot and so Karen who was a nurse said well can we have some oxygen?

Because if she runs into some respiratory distress we want to give her some oxygen to help her and the doctor looked at her and said Karen you have to learn to let go and she said I'm just asking for some oxygen to help my daughter breathe and he said it again at that point Mama Bear stood uply exposed and we got a script for oxygen.

We got home that day I'll never forget the next day the next morning the hospice doctor shows up and spends a half hour with us telling us how our daughter's gonna die and what we need to do to comfort her as she dies and said was there anything we can give her and he gave us a prescription he left a couple days later our family doctor pediatrician came by to see her and says is she on any medication I said no she's doing fine and Karen said well she has this script for when she gets into trouble.

And he looked at this and he says well this is morphine he said this is three times the dose that she should receive so we ended hospice care and we decided at that point that we were going to cherish every moment we had birthday parties for Bella every week every week we had a birthday party you know what our hope was that we would have as many weeks with her as we have years with our children and the weeks turned into months things seemed to be going great and then she got sick a cold and within 24 hours she stopped breathing.

Karen had to do CPR resuscitate her took her to the hospital she was in the hospital for about a week but she got better but when she came home wasn't as good never really fully recovered.

And then a few months two months later she got sick again I'll never forget this I was holding her and she was struggling breathing and I kept trying to implore come on I gave her oxygen I said you know just keep working as we were rushing around to take her to the hospital and then she just went limp turned blue and stopped I called the Karen I said Karen she's not breathing her heart monitor was she stopped didn't read anything so we put her on the bed and said Karen immediately I stood there and tried to talk her into breathing I'm a politician come on I said Bella you got to breathe Karen sort of knocked me out of the way all our kids are there watching all this going on and she gets the amboo bag and anyway she brings her back I'll never forget going to the emergency room with her and I got a call from our daughter Sarah Maria who at the time was 12 years of age and she said how's Bella doing I said she's she's okay she's stable she said Dad mom saved Bella's life I said that's right she did honey and she said Dad you didn't do anything my kids tell it like it is I said well you'll find out in marriage that's pretty much the case but I went through a whole period in that moment because I was the rock throughout the time that Bella went through all this from the very first days I was the guy that was going to stand and hold this family together and I figured out a way to do it I would just love her a little less I would just see her as someone who wasn't going to be here I would see her as someone who I'm gonna lose and just not hold her so tight.

The second time she almost died I was in that emergency room and I was holding her finger was holding me my finger with her little hand and she kept looking at me as the physicians worked on her.

And then I just realized how could I do that how could I do that how could I love her less and I realized the pain would be so much more if I didn't give her everything if I didn't unconditionally love her.

You see Bella taught me something Bella is disabled Bella may never walk or talk or feed herself but she does one thing and she does it amazingly well she loves me unconditionally and I love her and what she taught me was that that is the same relationship I have with the Father I am disabled I can do nothing for him I cannot add to his glory all I can do is love him and all he does is unconditionally love me.

So Bella not only survived she thrived she's doing great and things happened in the country with elections that just compelled Karen and I who were done with politics to get back in.

Why?

Because we were concerned about the future of our country particularly a bill called Obamacare we had seen how children with disabilities are treated in the healthcare system particularly mental and physical disabilities and we decided that for her and for others like her as well as for a country that I thought would lose its freedom because of this bill that I had to get out there again in politics.

And of course the likely thing the most reasonable thing for a man who lost his election by the largest percentage of any senator in 40 years is to turn around five years later and run for president of the United States people would ask me are you running for president because I would be out doing speeches and traveling the country and I would answer the same way every time no I'm walking and I'd say it to the press I said I'm trying to walk God's path and he'll make it known to me whether he wants me to do this or not I asked my wife Karen I said it's about a year and a half before the primaries I said you know I'm thinking about this what do you think no way she said I said well I said you know why not I said let's can't can't you let's just pray about it it's always a good thing you know when husbands you get to know pray about it.

Well I meant it.

I said let's pray about it.

And her answer was no God could not possibly want you to run for president of the United States and so I took that as an undecided and we continued down the path and eventually she did pray about it.

Because I knew she would and she did and she confided in me and she didn't want to she didn't want to she did not want to run but she came to me and says I don't want to do this but we have to do this because I'm hearing the same thing and so against her own will she followed God's will and we together embarked on this amazing journey amazing journey no money nobody I mean most of the national polls they wouldn't even put me in the polls and we were able to do amazing things but yes we won Iowa which was amazing in itself but the change in the campaign it's my last story the change in the campaign came in Florida I had to go home because I had to release my taxes I don't have an accountant I do my own taxes so I had to go home and get them and I wasn't home very often during the campaign.

So I took a day during Florida after I'd lost New Hampshire in South Carolina and was getting killed in Florida so I figured well I can leave there I'm not gonna do any better if I stay there.

And so I went home to get my taxes and that night my daughter got very sick and we ended up having to take her to the hospital she hadn't been in the hospital in three and a half years.

Well I was scheduled to go back to Florida that day and so I had to do something.

We had never talked about Bella during the campaign because we wanted to keep her privacy.

We didn't want her to be a campaign tool if you will but we had to say why I wasn't going back because if I just said I'm canceling my day well they'd say oh he's getting out of the race and I may have gotten out of the race but I wasn't willing to make that decision at that moment.

And so we announced that Bella was sick and that I was going to be there with her for as long as it took and so we had to tell the world about Bella we did a little video and put it out there.

Well two days later when I was back on the campaign trail she recovered well enough she was on the road she was in good shape it was really miraculous candidly they thought she had pneumonia and it disappeared so I went back out and it was a different campaign.

I remember going to St.

Charles Missouri at the first stop and there was a man on the left hand side of the crowd standing there with a little girl in his shoulders who had Down syndrome.

Trisomy18 is an extra 18th chromosome that's what my daughter has it's a very severe disability.

Down syndrome was trisomy 21 it's an extra 21st chromosome same type of disorder and so this man had this little girl with Down syndrome on her shoulder holding a sign saying I'm for Bella's dad At that moment, I realized, I looked around, there were people in wheelchairs for the first time there.

Every event I went to, people with disabilities who were struggling with things came.

Someone was giving them a voice.

And miraculously, we ended up winning the next three states.

We didn't go on to win the campaign.

The last week of the campaign, we had just lost a critical state, and Bella got sick again.

That was sign enough for me that it was time to get back home and take care of my family again.

We had run the race.

We had finished the test.

It was time to spend time with my family again.

It was an amazing journey.

When I travel around the country now, people come up to me.

I happen to get at the airport this morning.

And they look at me and they say, you know, you get that look, right?

I think I know this guy.

And they say, you know, did you go to this high school?

And I said, no.

Rick Santorm.

Oh yeah, Rick Santorum, that's it.

Invariably, invariably, the question I get is, how's your daughter Bella?

God will take horrible tragedies in your life.

He will take impediments that seem insurmountable, pain that is insufferable.

And if you stay close to him and are not afraid of confronting those challenges, he will bless you.

And so I ask you, on behalf of your country, a country under God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that God.

I ask you to rise.

I ask you to take the spirit that is in you.

And don't check it at the door of your house, of your workplace, of your playplace.

Witness.

Stand for truth.

Stand for his love.

Our country desperately needs you.

Politicians are not going to solve the problems that confront this country.

I have met very few politicians who are leaders.

They are followers.

They follow the pack.

You, each and every one of you, be not afraid.

One of my favorite sayings is God did not call us to be successful.

He called on us to be faithful.

One final story, then I'm done.

Okay, it was my second final story.

Anyway.

I heard the laugh over there.

I think we're up here, we don't hear these things.

During the partial birth abortion debate.

Second time.

We had been debating all day, six hours on the floor debating Barbara Boxer.

Get some special place in heaven for that.

So we finished the debate, about to wrap up the Senate, the votes the next morning, and there's just something inside me that said, I gotta do more.

I gotta tell the stories of all these disabled children.

Because that's what they were saying.

We have to keep this legal because children with disabilities, you know, parents don't want these kids once they find out they're sick or gonna die and things like that.

So they need to keep this procedure legal.

So I wanted to tell the stories of the moms who had to fight to have their children delivered.

Because you can't find a high-risk OB to deliver or a hospital who wants to deal with these disabled children at birth.

True stories.

Got lots of them.

So I felt like I had to tell those stories.

So I went back in the cloakroom, called my wife Karen.

We had five children at the time.

Excuse me, four children at the time.

It gets confusing.

And so I called her, I said, you know, it's eight or eight: thirty at night.

I said, you know, honey, you know, I've I you know get this, and you know, I feel like I'm called to do this.

And she, you know, it's Karen.

That's what you feel called to do, go do it.

So I went back out there and I told the guy at the desk, there's one guy in the Senate, the guy had to preside over the Senate, and then me.

Nobody, everybody was gone.

And I said, Look, I'll be five minutes.

An hour and a half later, okay, don't worry, I'm done.

Uh an hour and a half later, I finished.

I felt, ugh, I nailed it.

I mean, if there's anybody from the Senate listening to me, I got their vote.

I changed their vote.

I knew I just felt it.

I went home that night, everybody's asleep.

I get up the next morning, leave at 5 30, I'm back here, we have a vote, we lost.

Didn't change one vote.

I finished, walked out the door, walked down the steps of the Capitol, and I thought, you, prideful man.

Another night away from your family, another night where you're a lousy father, a lousy husband, and a prideful man to think that somehow you can change the world.

Then five days later, I got an email.

It was from a young man from Michigan State University, and it read as follows: Recently, while my girlfriend and I were flipping through the channels, we came across C-SPAN.

We were fortunate enough to hear your speech regarding the evils of partial birth abortion.

We saw the picture of a little boy with headphones on who was lucky enough to have parents who loved him enough to bring him into this world instead of ending his life.

Both of us were moved to tears by your speech.

And at that moment, my girlfriend confessed to me that she had scheduled an appointment for an abortion the following week.

She never told me about her pregnancy because she knew I would object to any decision to kill our child.

But after watching your emotional speech, she looked at me as tears rolled down her cheeks and told me that she could not go through with it.

We're not ready to be parents, but I'm grateful that our child will live.

Please take some comfort in knowing that at least one life was saved because of your speech.

You saved the life of our child.