GOP lawmaker calls Obama the 'abortion president'

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) on Tuesday called President Obama the "abortion president" given his support for Planned Parenthood and the 2010 healthcare law that Smith said will allow public funding of abortions.

Smith and several other House Republicans spoke on the House floor to mark the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court that made abortion legal. Smith said that despite recent setbacks, he and other anti-abortion-rights members would continue fighting to curtail abortion rights.

"There are seemingly ominous present-day signs that hinder ending abortion denial, and a reconnection with reality and life," Smith said, "certainly the reelection of abortion President Barack Obama, [and] public funding for abortion in the Obamacare health exchanges that come online in 2014, a massive increase of public funding for abortion."

Smith and other Republicans said that in the 40 years since the decision, more than 55 million babies have been aborted, which they said is equivalent to the population of England.

"Forty years of victims, dead babies, wounded women, shattered lives," Smith said. "Forty years of government-sanctioned violence against women and children.

"It is deeply troubling that despite the fact that Planned Parenthood claims direct responsibility for killing over six million unborn babies in their clinics ... Planned Parenthood remains President Obama's favorite organization."

Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) said flatly that the Supreme Court "got it wrong with Roe."

"I along with many millions of people around America pray that one day that decision will be overturned," he said.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) said Roe v. Wade was "one of the worst decisions of our United States Supreme Court."

GOP members were joined on the floor by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who supported the other speakers and those who will participate in the March for Life rally this Friday in Washington.

"Those gathered this Friday, and those of us here on the floor of the House this afternoon, are joined because we believe that life must be protected, and must be protected especially for those who have no ability to protect it themselves," Cantor said.

Several Democrats also took the floor earlier in the day for a series of one-minute speeches, in which they praised the Supreme Court decision for giving women abortion rights.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) said he was nearly aborted years ago by his mother, who was just a teenager at the time. She could not go through with the procedure, and her friends drove her home.

"Heaven forbid, she told her mother she was pregnant," he said. "I was born a few months later at Holy Family Mother's Home in downtown L.A.

"I get to come here behind the microphone and say thank you. Thank you for giving me the chance to be alive."

— This story was updated at 4:35 p.m.

---