Thirty-eight years in the greatest human rights struggle on earth—the right to life movement—and what I still don’t get is this:

How can so many seemingly smart, sane, compassionate and accomplished people—especially in politics—support, promote and if President Obama has his way in the pending health care legislation, lavishly fund with public dollars, the violent death of unborn children and the wounding of their moms by abortion.

Is it really so hard to understand that abortion is violence against children, a pernicious form of child abuse falsely and aggressively marketed as choice, a human right, or health care? How long will we permit the pro-choice cover-up and bogus safety claims to misinform, especially in light of the reams of evidence documenting serious injury to women who abort?

Abortion, safe? What nonsense.

Women have been profoundly ill served by the all-too-familiar pattern of denial and deception employed so skillfully by the abortion industry. Women deserve better. They, at the very least, deserve the truth.

Years ago, a friend of mine—Dr. Jean Garton—wrote a book and included how her young child unexpectedly walked into the room as she was preparing a lecture on abortion.

Her three-year-old child took one gasping look at the badly bruised and battered body of the aborted baby on the screen and shouted: “Mommy, who broke the baby?”

That young child saw the brutality of abortion with unclouded comprehension.

That child was unencumbered and unaffected by the deceptively clever and preposterously misleading propaganda dished by the multi-billion dollar pro-choice industry.

That child saw, and knew immediately that babies are smashed and broken to bits by abortion. And with alarm, wanted to know, who did it.

Last fall, like that young child, Abby Johnson, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director in Texas—with eight years at the facility—watched ultrasound imaging of an abortion in progress of a three month old unborn child.

Like the victimized baby on the ultrasound monitor being dismembered in real time, Ms. Johnson was crushed by what she saw.

Self described as “extremely pro-choice” but now pro-life, she said she watched an unborn child “crumple” before her very eyes as the infant was dismembered and vacuumed to death by a hideous suction device 20-30 times more powerful than a household vacuum cleaner.

“I could see the baby try to move away,” Johnson said in a startling moment of truth and clarity. “I just thought, what am I doing … never again.”

Tragically, never again comes too late for the approximately 52 million babies slaughtered in Planned Parenthood clinics and abortion mills throughout America since the infamous holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.

But it doesn’t come too late for the millions of other children who face extermination today, tomorrow and the next day if we at long last awake from our slumber and combat the cruelty and injustice of abortion.

But there’s even more to the pro-choice cover-up than dead kids.

Abortion hurts women, physically, psychologically, and the data strongly suggests that it even mal-affects children subsequently born to women who abort.

Last year the Times of London reported that “senior obstetricians and psychiatrists say that new evidence has uncovered a clear link between abortion and mental illness in women with no previous history of psychological problems.” They found that women who have had abortions have twice the level of psychological problems and three times the level of depression as women who have given birth or never been pregnant.

In 2006, a comprehensive New Zealand study found that 78.6 percent of the 15-18 year old girls who had abortions displayed symptoms of major depression compared to 31 percent of their peers. And that 27 percent of the 21-25 year old women who had abortions had suicidal idealization compared to 8 percent of those who did not have an abortion.

A total of at least 102 studies comport with those numbing findings of psychological harm to women who abort.

And now even Time magazine among others have finally reported on another suppressed fact—abortion adversely affects the health of subsequent children born to women who abort.

A total of 113 studies demonstrated an association between abortion and preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies. Studies have indicated that the risks of preterm birth goes up 36 percent after one abortion, and a staggering 93 percent after two or more abortions. Similarly, the risk of subsequent children being born with low birth weight increases by 36 percent after one abortion and 72 percent after two or more. Prematurity and low birth weight are leading causes of disabilities in children.

All of this begs a serious question. Why then is the Obama administration expanding this vicious assault on women and children—often by massively subsidizing pro-abortion non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to do the dirty work—in the United States, Africa, Latin America, everywhere.

Maybe some politicians aren’t so smart, sane, or compassionate after all.

New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith delivered this speech Jan. 21 on the House floor.