mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman for yielding me this time .  i thank the speaker , as has already been acknowledged .  it is his leadership that has brought this issue to the floor tonight , and again i commend him for that leadership .  mr. speaker , there has been much said tonight , much eloquence on both sides , about this issue .  i fear sometimes that in our effort to try to come to some sort of conclusion that we actually overthink an issue once in a while .  we think just enough to get in the way of our common sense .  i hope that is not the case here tonight .  i believe fairly deeply that life does have a purpose .  i lost my father 6 months and 6 days ago tonight .  and in his very final days , he too needed to be fed by a tube .  he needed help with his basic bodily functions , could not get out of his bed , could not take care of himself .  but in the 56 years of life i have been granted , mr. speaker , i shared the most intimate , the most profound moment i ever had with my father about 36 hours before he passed away , after he could no longer speak , after he could no longer feed himself or care for himself in almost any manner at all .  he communicated with his eyes , and he communicated with a hand on my forehead in the most profound way imaginable .  i would have regretted deeply had i been denied that moment , and i am absolutely convinced , mr. speaker , that my father would have regretted having been denied that moment as well .  outside this chamber there is a statue of thomas jefferson .  thomas jefferson was the one , of course , who told us about those inalienable rights , those rights that can not be taken away from us by anyone , those rights that come from our creator .  those rights , of course , include life , liberty , and the pursuit of happiness .  i think if we are going to make mistakes , and god knows certainly that we make mistakes , we are human , but if we are going to make mistakes let us err on the side of life , not denying life but granting life and giving every opportunity to that .  