southchild

First of all, let’s be clear: The scandal over Barack Obama’s determination to see the Born Alive Infant Protection Act defeated is not about abortion. It is about infanticide, pure and simple.

Ramesh Ponnuru puts it this way:

Illinois law has rules — loophole-ridden rules, but rules — requiring treatment of babies who have “sustainable survivability.” If an attempted abortion of a pre-viable fetus results in a live birth, the law did not protect the infant. Nurse Jill Stanek said that at her hospital “abortions” were repeatedly performed by inducing the live birth of a pre-viable fetus and then leaving it to die. When she made her report, the attorney general said that no law had been broken. That’s why legislators proposed a bill to fill the gap.

Obama did not want the gap filled. He did not want pre-viable fetuses/infants to have any legal protection. In the Illinois legislature, he argued that providing them with legal protection would both be unconstitutional in itself — a violation of the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence — and undermine the right to abortion.

Obama was wrong about these points. The Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence treats the location of the young human organism, not its stage of development, as the key factor in whether it can be legally protected.

RedState documents that Obama has lied at least three times regarding his “justifications” for killing the bill. (Thanks, Michelle!)

Seth Leibsohn noted that Obama has been fast and loose with the “liar” word, wielding it three times in just one day:

Obama’s website has called a lot of us (and Bill Bennett by name) distorters of the truth for saying exactly this—that Obama scuttled a bill that was mapped after the federal Born Alive legislation. Obama, himself, called those of us pointing this out “liars” three times on Saturday night.

Here’s the transcript of Obama’s actual statements on the floor of the Illinois Senate which includes this damning statement:

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.

In other words, he blocked the bill because it burdens the abortion doctor who would have to get a second physician to try and save the child’s life. Yes, we said child, Obama, not fetus. Does anyone besides Barack Obama call a living baby outside of the mother’s body a fetus? Here’s the definition of fetus from the Medical Dictionary:

Fetus: The unborn offspring from the end of the 8th week after conception (when the major structures have formed) until birth. Up until the eighth week, the developing offspring is called an embryo.

Does anyone’s definition of “abortion” include denying medical care to a living child outside of the mother’s body with the intent that the child shall die? No. That inaction is called infanticide.

Even pro-abortion rights groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL didn’t oppose the bill. Again, from Nurse Jill Stanek:

Last night Sean Hannity interviewed me about my experience at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, IL, holding a baby who had been aborted alive for 45 minutes until he died.

The interview extended to Barack Obama’s leadership role in opposing the IL Born Alive Infants Protection Act, to give abortion survivors legal rights.

One other point clarified during the interview: Obama denied for 4 years he voted for the identical language in IL that was passed overwhelmingly on the federal level, including a unanimous vote in the US Senate. NARAL went neutral on the bill as well.

Here’s the audio from Senator Infanticide himself:

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Dalai Bama, General, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.