The dying baby and the linen closet: the truth about Barack Obama's pro-abortion extremism
Robert George of the Witherspoon Institute says it well:
The above paragraph predictably will provoke outrage and a great deal of whining from Obama's supporters. But the facts are clear. Despite his efforts to present himself as a conciliatory healer, Barack Obama's record and positions on life issues are so extreme that they should raise alarms in the mind of anybody who is truly in favor of dialog and healing on this divisive issue. He is well to the left of the American electorate on the whole range of issues involving the 21st Century equivalent of slavery. The debate over abortion and allied issues is merely the contemporary form of the unsettled question of whether all living members of our species truly count, and are deserving of the dignity their humanity demands and the protection which our founding documents guarantee them.
Obama would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prevents your tax money from being used to pay for abortions other than in cases of rape and incest.
Obama has condemned the Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, banning the particularly ugly form of infanticide known as partial birth abortion.
He regards a young woman being unable to abort a child conceived unintentionally as a form of retroactive birth control as "punishment."
He identifies equality for women with the right to abortion on demand.
He even wants to strip federal funding from pregnancy centers that offer women alternatives to abortion!
And it gets even worse. He went so far as to co-sponsor a bill- the misleadingly named Human Cloning Ban Act of 2005- that would have authorized the mass-production of human embryos for the sole and express purpose of cannibalizing them for experimentation!
I could go on, but I think the point is made. Barack Obama is no moderate on the subject of abortion- "radical" would be a more accurate description- and he's no "healer,' either. But perhaps the most grotesque example of his dubious values in this area concerns a matter he and his campaign have lied about with great success: his role in killing a bill- subsequently passed unanimously by the Illinois Senate, and supported even by the most strongly pro-choice members of that body- which would have replaced an Illinois law deemed "unenforceable" by that state's Attorney General with one which would have offered real protection to babies who survived attempted abortions.
Obama's role in killing that law- and subsequently misrepresenting the facts regarding his actions- has become a cause celebre on the Left and in the Obama-loving mass media, a supposed textbook case of the lies and smears and distortions of the Obama record of which the Right has been guilty in seeking to awaken the American electorate to just how radical Barack Obama really is, especially where abortion is concerned. And lest the point be missed, when confronted with the facts about Obama's role in the matter of the Born Alive bill, the final resort of the Obamaphile is proving precisely to demand in a shocked tone how we could possibly believe such a terrible thing about Sen. Obama (even if the facts prove it to be true)?!
In order that Obama's positon with regard to the Illinois Born Alive bill be clearly before us, let me quote the response he gave Sen. McCain in explaining his role in killing it:
And in fact, there was such a law on the books, enacted in 1975. Two things, though.
First, the 1975 law referred only to "viable" infants (leaving both the decision as to whether a particular baby was "viable" and the criteria for making that decision to the abortionist!).
Secondly, the Attorney General of Illinois refused to prosecute cases brought under the 1975 law (including a notorious case in which Nurse Jill Stanek at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn had found a dying infant left to expire with neither comfort nor even palliative treatment in a linen closet!) precisely because the limitation of its protections to "viable" infants and its leaving of the decision as to what constituted "viable" to the abortionist, the provision of the 1975 bill protecting babies who survived attempted abortions was unenforcable.
Let me say that again, less anybody miss the point: the reason why the law Obama helped to kill was needed was that the Illinois law protecting babies who survived abortion- the one which he now points out was "already on the books-" was not being enforced, and the Attorney General of Illinois had ruled it unenforceable.
And Obama knew that when he sought to mislead the viewers during his debate with Sen. McCain. He knew it when he voted against the Illinois Born Alive Act. Worse, his position was that the very provision of the law that made it unenforcable had to be safeguarded!
In arguing against that bill on the floor of the Illinois Senate, Obama said
This, Obama insisted, was an unreasonable expectation to put on a doctor. Moreover, it could undercut Roe v. Wade by placing a burden on "the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion."
But the previous year a similar Federal law had been passed through both houses of Congress without a dissenting vote (state law, not Federal law, governs the actual regulation of clinical practice in hospitals, making the passage of state legislation necessary). Not a single pro-choice Democrat, no matter how liberal, had opposed it. Why? Because a paragraph had been inserted which answered Obama's objection, and that of other pro-choicers. That paragraph read
Not only that, but prior to Obama's final vote against the measure- a vote to kill it in committee-the Illinois bill was amended to contain precisely that language.
On June 30 of this year, Obama's campaign denied this, claiming that Obama would have voted for the Illinois bill if it had contained the same language, and argued that an amendment to the bill inserted before Obama voted to kill it in committee the last time he voted on it differed from that of the Federal law. Yet once again-as FactCheck.org verifies- the language in the amendment, which was appended to the bill before Obama voted to kill it in committee, was in fact identical to that in the Federal law which passed both houses of Congress without a dissenting vote.
Obama accused opponents who cited his roll in killing the law of lying. In fact, as the FactCheck.org article demonstrates, it was Obama who lied. Not only that, but Obama's campaign site retains that lie to this very day.
It must be conceded that his stated reasons for acting as he did may well have been his actual reasons. It might really be that while literally every pro-choice liberal in Congress felt that the language in question adequately safeguarded Roe, Obama honestly disagreed.
But if that's the case, he should have said so, instead of lying about the content of the bill he voted to kill in committee as of the moment he voted to kill it. Moreover, this judgment only serves to underscore the main point: that whatever his motivation, on the topic of abortion Barack Obama is well to the left of even most pro-choicers.
After Obama had gone to Washington, the bill passed the Illinois Senate 95-0. Every pro-choice senator in Illinois had joined the pro-choice members of Congress and of the several state legislatures which passed a similar bill without a bit of controversy in differing with Barack Obama, and deciding that Roe would not be endangered by that language after all.
There is no doubt possible: Barack Obama is indeed the most radically pro-abortion member of Congress, and certainly the most radically pro-abortion candidate ever nominated for president.
HT: Cranach, FactCheck.org,
Sen. Barack Obama's views on life issues ranging from abortion to embryonic stem cell research mark him as not merely a pro-choice politician, but rather as the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket.
Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress.
The above paragraph predictably will provoke outrage and a great deal of whining from Obama's supporters. But the facts are clear. Despite his efforts to present himself as a conciliatory healer, Barack Obama's record and positions on life issues are so extreme that they should raise alarms in the mind of anybody who is truly in favor of dialog and healing on this divisive issue. He is well to the left of the American electorate on the whole range of issues involving the 21st Century equivalent of slavery. The debate over abortion and allied issues is merely the contemporary form of the unsettled question of whether all living members of our species truly count, and are deserving of the dignity their humanity demands and the protection which our founding documents guarantee them.
Obama would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prevents your tax money from being used to pay for abortions other than in cases of rape and incest.
Obama has condemned the Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, banning the particularly ugly form of infanticide known as partial birth abortion.
He regards a young woman being unable to abort a child conceived unintentionally as a form of retroactive birth control as "punishment."
He identifies equality for women with the right to abortion on demand.
He even wants to strip federal funding from pregnancy centers that offer women alternatives to abortion!
And it gets even worse. He went so far as to co-sponsor a bill- the misleadingly named Human Cloning Ban Act of 2005- that would have authorized the mass-production of human embryos for the sole and express purpose of cannibalizing them for experimentation!
I could go on, but I think the point is made. Barack Obama is no moderate on the subject of abortion- "radical" would be a more accurate description- and he's no "healer,' either. But perhaps the most grotesque example of his dubious values in this area concerns a matter he and his campaign have lied about with great success: his role in killing a bill- subsequently passed unanimously by the Illinois Senate, and supported even by the most strongly pro-choice members of that body- which would have replaced an Illinois law deemed "unenforceable" by that state's Attorney General with one which would have offered real protection to babies who survived attempted abortions.
Obama's role in killing that law- and subsequently misrepresenting the facts regarding his actions- has become a cause celebre on the Left and in the Obama-loving mass media, a supposed textbook case of the lies and smears and distortions of the Obama record of which the Right has been guilty in seeking to awaken the American electorate to just how radical Barack Obama really is, especially where abortion is concerned. And lest the point be missed, when confronted with the facts about Obama's role in the matter of the Born Alive bill, the final resort of the Obamaphile is proving precisely to demand in a shocked tone how we could possibly believe such a terrible thing about Sen. Obama (even if the facts prove it to be true)?!
In order that Obama's positon with regard to the Illinois Born Alive bill be clearly before us, let me quote the response he gave Sen. McCain in explaining his role in killing it:
There was a bill that was put forward before the Illinois Senate that said you have to provide lifesaving treatment and that would have helped to undermine Roe v. Wade. The fact is that there was already a law on the books in Illinois that required providing lifesaving treatment, which is why not only myself but pro-choice Republicans and Democrats voted against it.
And in fact, there was such a law on the books, enacted in 1975. Two things, though.
First, the 1975 law referred only to "viable" infants (leaving both the decision as to whether a particular baby was "viable" and the criteria for making that decision to the abortionist!).
Secondly, the Attorney General of Illinois refused to prosecute cases brought under the 1975 law (including a notorious case in which Nurse Jill Stanek at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn had found a dying infant left to expire with neither comfort nor even palliative treatment in a linen closet!) precisely because the limitation of its protections to "viable" infants and its leaving of the decision as to what constituted "viable" to the abortionist, the provision of the 1975 bill protecting babies who survived attempted abortions was unenforcable.
Let me say that again, less anybody miss the point: the reason why the law Obama helped to kill was needed was that the Illinois law protecting babies who survived abortion- the one which he now points out was "already on the books-" was not being enforced, and the Attorney General of Illinois had ruled it unenforceable.
And Obama knew that when he sought to mislead the viewers during his debate with Sen. McCain. He knew it when he voted against the Illinois Born Alive Act. Worse, his position was that the very provision of the law that made it unenforcable had to be safeguarded!
In arguing against that bill on the floor of the Illinois Senate, Obama said
As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it -is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.
This, Obama insisted, was an unreasonable expectation to put on a doctor. Moreover, it could undercut Roe v. Wade by placing a burden on "the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion."
But the previous year a similar Federal law had been passed through both houses of Congress without a dissenting vote (state law, not Federal law, governs the actual regulation of clinical practice in hospitals, making the passage of state legislation necessary). Not a single pro-choice Democrat, no matter how liberal, had opposed it. Why? Because a paragraph had been inserted which answered Obama's objection, and that of other pro-choicers. That paragraph read
Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this Section.
Not only that, but prior to Obama's final vote against the measure- a vote to kill it in committee-the Illinois bill was amended to contain precisely that language.
On June 30 of this year, Obama's campaign denied this, claiming that Obama would have voted for the Illinois bill if it had contained the same language, and argued that an amendment to the bill inserted before Obama voted to kill it in committee the last time he voted on it differed from that of the Federal law. Yet once again-as FactCheck.org verifies- the language in the amendment, which was appended to the bill before Obama voted to kill it in committee, was in fact identical to that in the Federal law which passed both houses of Congress without a dissenting vote.
Obama accused opponents who cited his roll in killing the law of lying. In fact, as the FactCheck.org article demonstrates, it was Obama who lied. Not only that, but Obama's campaign site retains that lie to this very day.
It must be conceded that his stated reasons for acting as he did may well have been his actual reasons. It might really be that while literally every pro-choice liberal in Congress felt that the language in question adequately safeguarded Roe, Obama honestly disagreed.
But if that's the case, he should have said so, instead of lying about the content of the bill he voted to kill in committee as of the moment he voted to kill it. Moreover, this judgment only serves to underscore the main point: that whatever his motivation, on the topic of abortion Barack Obama is well to the left of even most pro-choicers.
After Obama had gone to Washington, the bill passed the Illinois Senate 95-0. Every pro-choice senator in Illinois had joined the pro-choice members of Congress and of the several state legislatures which passed a similar bill without a bit of controversy in differing with Barack Obama, and deciding that Roe would not be endangered by that language after all.
There is no doubt possible: Barack Obama is indeed the most radically pro-abortion member of Congress, and certainly the most radically pro-abortion candidate ever nominated for president.
HT: Cranach, FactCheck.org,
Comments
Also, on the Born Alive stuff... These are debunked and recycled attacks from Alan Keyes in the 2004 Senate race. The only thing Obama did wrong was get confused in an explanation of why he voted down one particular 2003 version of BAIPA after more than 7 different versions of the bill were introduced in the Illinois General Assembly. No he did not lie about why he voted this down, but yes, he was wrong about the explanation of the 2003 version at first. He, and his website, now explains that there was a law already in place and that the bill could have affected state law, not Roe v. Wade. If you read the rest of that FactCheck.org article you will see that they confirm that Obama was wrong about that explanation but they conclude that the "infanticide" charge is obviously a conclusion not based in fact but partisan politics. He, and the rest of the Dems on his HHS committee, voted down that 2003 version because of generally accepted concerns that it could negatively affect a woman’s right to choose in Illinois. In any case Illinois law already required doctors to do everything they could to save an infant born alive during an abortion.
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor has said that Obama would have voted for the 2005 Illinois bill if he had been a state legislator when it was considered because it addressed the concerns present in the 2003 version, much as he says he would have supported the federal bill, which wouldn’t have impacted non-existent federal law.
Also, the Hyde amendment should be repealed, it robs women of their just right to choose what happens in and to their own bodies no matter your socioeconomic status. Making abortion illegal will not reduce its incidence, it will only make it more dangerous for women, we know this from history and experience. We can reduce abortion by providing social support services that help women choose to go through with their pregnancy because they are confident they will be able to support their child. We should also provide better access to contraception to prevent unplanned pregnancy in the first place, and, yes, we should arm our children with the facts about sex, because they are having it, more often and earlier even under abstinence-only education. Let's face that reality and provide them with knowledge that will keep them healthy and prevent pregnancy until they decide they are ready to have children. We can do all of that, drastically reduce the incidence of abortion, and still maintain a woman's right tot choose. Seems like common sense to me.
There is a reason why your comment is worded the way it is, and why it fails to note that I answered your arguments about the 2003 Human Life Act in the original post (though I will answer them again more succinctly below). A large part of your post is cut and pasted from elsewhere. The identical language is appearing all over the web wherever the facts concerning Sen. Obama's involvment in the demise of the 2003 bill are pointed out. That includes the irrelevant reference to Alan Keyes.
Now, those facts. As I've already pointed out, the law which supposedly would made the Born Alive Act unnecessary had been rendered unenforcable by a consent decree signed by then Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris a decade before the bill in question was even introduced. Any abortionist who declared a fetus "non-viable-" in the absence of any accountability whatsoever, and regardless of the medical facts- could abandon a baby to die with no possibility of prosecution. In fact, the Born Alive bill had been occasioned by a public outcry over the frequency with which this was being done.
That being the case, when Sen. Obama and his supporters claim that there was already a law on the books that protected abortion survivers, they are lying. The law to which they refer had been a dead letter for a decade.
Worse, Obama had argued on the floor of the Illinois Senate that any such law which did not contain precisely the provision which rendered the protections of the 1975 Illinois Abortion Act unenforceable would place an undue burden on the abortionist! I acknowledge that Obama has admitted to a certain degree of confusion as to his own motivations. But I think we can safely assume that he was telling the truth when he explained those reasons on the floor of the Illinois Senate at the time.
As to Obama's claim that he would have voted for the bill if it had contained the language the Federal law contained, the HHS committee under Sen. Obama's chairmanship unanimously adopted an amendment adding precisely that language to the 2003 Born Alive Act on March 12- just before Obama and the Democrats on the committee voted to kill the bill. Interestingly, though FactCheck muffs the point about the protections of the 1975 Illinois Abortion Law having been gutted by the O'Malley-Herbst consent decree, it gets the business about the amendment right.
To borrow a phrase from the last Democratic nominee,Obama was against the Federal language before he was for it- and the fact that he voted against the bill in its amended state belies his hypothetical. If Obama "would have" voted for the bill if it contained that language, why didn't he?
Whether the charges are old or new, and whoever has brought them up in the past, Obama's responses both then and now are proven lies.
No woman who has not been either raped or made the victim of incest can ever justly claim that she has been deprived of due control over what is happening in her own body. With those two exceptions, pregnancy is the result of activity she entered into willingly, in full knowledge of the possible consequences. To say this is not to be heartless or draconian. It is, however, to recognize that the right of a human life which came into existence as the result of her own willing activity to continue to exist trumps any reasonable claim she may have to "control her own body." My right to swing my fist ends at the point of your nose; her right to "control her own body" ends when it involves the destruction of someone else's, in residence there as the direct result of an informed decision amounting to an invitation.
We need to be clear about two points. If they strike you as tautologies, they are. Nevertheless, they need to be made, because folks on the pro-abortion side of the argument call them into question when they can get away with it.
First, a human fetus is human. It belongs to species homo sapiens. And by the generally-accepted definitions of life, it is alive. Ergo, it is a human life.
That is not the point upon which thoughtful people disagree where abortion is concerned. The disagreement is rather precisely over the issue that was at stake in slavery, and in the Civil Rights Movement, and in our own Revoltion: whether there possibly can be such a thing as a human life that is inherently less sacred than every other human life.
That being the case, to set aside the Hyde Amendment would be just as morally grotesque as Roe v. Wade itself, which set aside the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution and invented a "constitutional right" of which the Constitution knows nothing, and which cannot logically be inferred from the Constitution.
The American people are, for the most point, not lawyers. Ever since Roe was handed down, about two-thirds of the American people have told pollsters that they support it. The paradox is that approximately the same percentage have told those same pollsters over that same period, and just as consistently, that they believe that abortion should be illegal for the reasons for which more than ninety percent of abortions are performed in this country!
As I said, the American people are not lawyers. Most can't be expected to know the details of Roe; for most, it seems to simply represent the concept that abortion should be legal at all. But the fact is that the very premise upon which Roe is based is wrong. There is a consensus in this country about abortion, and there has been right along. The consensus is that abortion should be illegal in principle, but that exceptions should be made in extreme circumstances.
Many on both sides of the abortion divide disagree with that consensus. They should have the ongoing right to make their respective cases to the American people, and try to change the consensus. Indeed, if the Supreme Court had not arbitrarily imposed an alien solution to the abortion debate upon America, the details of the consensus which already existed in nascent form in 1973 would by now have expressed themselves in the form of legislation, and abortion would be no more divisive than it is in other Western countries- where, unlike the United States, the matter has been dealt with by recourse to the democratic process instead of by judicial fiat.
But in the meantime, the very logic of Roe demands its repeal. There is indeed a consensus on abortion in America. There has been right along- and it is considerably to the Right of Roe!
For the record, I agree with you about sex education, and about the necessity of providing precisely such support to pregnant women as you suggest. And I acknowledge that, in strict context, Sen. Obama's remarks concerning pregnancy as a "punishment" were indeed about birth control- though the values those words reflect are not so easily restricted.
I notice today, four years later, that you did read the post carefully enough to misrepresent what the FactCheck article said about the charge. Far from dismissing it as a partisan attack, it said that whether it makes Obama guilty of infanticide is a matter of opinion.
If you're going to misrepresent something on line, Mike, don't do it on a page with a link to the article you're misrepresenting. In any case, I suggest both you and the reader of this comment check out the FactCheck page, and consider what it actually does say. Carefully.