This week, I joined several of my colleagues to send a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to expeditiously prosecute organized crime groups that are wreaking havoc across California. Organized retail theft and violence are causing many new safety and consumer risks. Now we are seeing the same organized attacks on cargo trains. These attacks continue, without penalty, thanks to the state’s disastrous progressive policies and lack of criminal prosecution. The effects of the continued theft and looting are felt throughout the country.
The supply chain crisis has created a new wave of violence at railroad tracks in Lincoln Heights. Organized groups are now stealing packages, equipment, and other important products from railcars in Los Angeles County as they sit idly on the tracks. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and Omicron variant spreading throughout Southern California, many individuals have used e-commerce to buy products instead of going to local stores. Some of these purchases include COVID-19 tests, Personal ProtectionEquipment (PPE), electronics, and food products – which are out of stock at many of our local stores due to supply chain shortages. Freight transportation has been vital to ensuring these products get to consumers and retailers, especially given the shortage of truck drivers in California. Should this criminal activity continue, access to PPE and other important items may be scarce, especially considering many of these purchases are delivered throughout the United States. Action is needed, and a continued lack of urgency will lead to further crime and delays of necessary items to consumers.
Also this week, we remember the 63.4 million unborn babies murdered since the tragic ruling of Roe v. Wade 49 years ago. Just this week, the Supreme Court rejected another appeal to block the Texas heartbeat bill, defending life for the unborn in Texas. Sadly, House Democrats are still pushing their extreme pro-abortion policies in appropriations and reconciliation legislation, and soon the Senate will take up House Democrats’ radical Women’s Health Protection Act, better known as the Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act, which imposes on-demand abortion until birth, removes nearly all pro-life protections for the unborn, and abolishes laws preventing late-term abortions. Speaker Pelosi even admitted that having taxpayer-funded abortions is a "priority" for Democrats.
As human beings, our most basic right is our right to life. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to future generations to preserve this right and ensure certain freedoms are always protected. It is vital that we protect the lives of the innocent unborn children who cannot protect themselves. At the center of our struggle as Americans is the protection of all human life, and as a husband and a father, I cannot in good conscience defend any policy that places the value of one life over the value of another. As this somber week ends, I am thankful for the army of Americans fighting every day for a future in which all children are seen as valuable and worthy of life.
For nearly a decade, I’ve made it a priority to fight in Congress for the right to life. I’ve worked with my colleagues in the House to protect taxpayer dollars from paying for abortions through insurance plans that cover abortion and abortion clinics and organizations. I’ve pushed to bring the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act to the floor to make sure children who are survivors of abortion are given the life-saving care they deserve. Finally, I am fighting for women in our rural communities as abortion advocates try to make unsafe practices such as telemedicine and abortion pills the new horizon for their own profit.
“The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
- Mother Teresa, 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, Washington DC
