The Unforgivable Truth
Obama's record on abortion casts doubt on his esteemed character
By CHELSEA WALKER
October 2008
Sen. Barack Obama has used the issue of abortion rights as a stepping stone to prestige within liberal circles throughout his political career, but few of his supporters seem to have explored just how deep-seated his pro-abortion sentiments are. In a time when many Americans have increasingly demanded instant gratification in all aspects of life, Obama has consistently styled himself as a white knight willing and able to bring them abortion on demand. His consistent 100 percent approval rating from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League is a disquieting testament to his opinion of the value (or, in his view, lack thereof) of human life. However, the most disturbing aspect of Obama’s voting record on abortion is his shameless advocacy of infanticide.
In an ironic twist of fate which greatly incensed Obama, the initial attempt to give abortion survivors the right to life was made in the Illinois state Legislature. After it was discovered that Illinois hospital workers were leaving babies to die in soiled utility closets when abortion doctors were unsuccessful in ending their short lives, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act was introduced to the Illinois Legislature in 2001 by Sen. Patrick O’Malley.
The act contains specific language stating that the human race includes any “infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.” Accordingly, infants who survive the best efforts of abortion doctors and their own parents to murder them are extended citizenship rights, including, most importantly, the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. The impetus for the bill was that nurses at hospitals were unclear about their role: should they care for the babies, or were they required just to let them die? When O’Malley introduced the bill, he informed his colleagues that it would mandate that doctors who performed an unsuccessful abortion resulting in premature birth be required to provide the baby with the best possible medical care.
Though he had previously voted against the bill in committee and therefore must have been familiar with its terms, Obama took the floor to ask leading questions in an attempt to make it seem as though babies born prematurely as a result of a failed abortion were only “as some might describe it … temporarily alive outside of the womb,” and that the main concern of the bill lay in providing medical care to infants as they expire.
He seemed to have deliberately misconstrued the language of the bill to downplay its importance; the purpose of the legislation was not merely to comfort infants as they die, but rather to give them adequate medical care so that they could live. He continued to speak fervently against the bill, maintaining that it would “not meet constitutional muster” because it defined infants born alive under these conditions as “persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old child – that was delivered to term.” According to Obama, the litmus test for a newborn’s right to avoid death by exposure is whether or not its parents and an abortion doctor originally intended for it to die.
Because doctors in Illinois and throughout the country perform (or attempt to perform) late-term induced-labor abortions, many victims of botched abortions are born alive and are in fact viable. The written opinion of Roe v. Wade, which pro-choice supporters cling to like a security blanket, defined “viable” as “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.” Had many of the past infant victims of botched abortions been given the “artificial aid” that the federal Born Alive Act signed by President Bush now guarantees them, they could have been given the same chance other premature babies have who are naturally born one or two months prematurely. They would not have merely been “temporarily alive outside of the womb,” as Obama put it.
In response to Obama’s claim that extremely premature babies are rarely capable of living outside of the womb, I would like to note that my twin brother and I were born two months prematurely because of complications; the neonatal ICU gave us several weeks of first-class care and sent us on our merry way. It seems egregiously unfair that my brother and I had the option of optimum medical care, but, according to Obama, other less fortunate infants do not deserve such care and should instead be left to die alone in a utility closet because their parents deem them unworthy of life.
One of the most heartrending examples of abortion survival that I have come across is the story of Gianna Jessen, spokeswoman for bornalivetruth.org and survivor of a saline abortion during which she was burned alive for eighteen hours in her mother’s womb. She was miraculously born alive and viable, but because of the oxygen deprivation which resulted from the botched abortion, she was also born with cerebral palsy. Doctors believed that she would never be able to walk, but she greatly surpassed all expectations and is now running 26-mile marathons in addition to speaking out for abortion survivors who are too small to have a voice.
She gives Jesus Christ the credit for her incredible life, and is actually grateful for her suffering because she believes that it forced her to put her trust and reliance in Him. This is a lady without a resentful bone in her body, although she has good reason to be bitter because, as she puts it, “if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn’t be here.”
In his vehement argument in opposition to the Illinois version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, Obama fretted that the bill “would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.” However, the statute defines a “born alive infant” as one with “a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.” Obama seems to be suggesting that Congress and all hospitals should differentiate between a child and an abortion survivor, and that they should do so solely on the basis of whether abortion or live birth was the original intent of the presiding physician. Obama’s insistence that a victim of a botched abortion is somehow less than human even if it exhibits all the characteristics of any other living human being confounds logic in addition to shredding every convention of morality that our society holds dear.
To placate Obama and other abortion fanatics, the bill was amended (with our Illustrious Savior’s help) to include a section stating, “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.” This section effectively reserves a woman’s initial right to abortion by denying the expansion of the “legal right” of an infant before it is born; until and unless it is born alive after an unsuccessful abortion, it has no legal right to life.
However, even after reworking the bill to address his fears about what passes “constitutional muster” (read: what protects any and all forms of abortion) Obama still inexplicably voted against the bill, bringing his total number of votes against some version of the Born Alive Act to four. Let’s see him spin that.
As unconscionable as Obama’s record on the Born Alive Act is, those votes only continue his pattern of supporting even the most gruesome violations of an infant’s basic human rights. He opposed a partial-birth abortion ban passed in Congress in 2003; a year later, Michelle Obama bragged about his inability to maintain even a semblance of regard for human life during her criticism of the partial-birth abortion ban as a “ban on a legitimate medical procedure,” naming her husband as a “candidate who will be tireless in the fight to protect women.” Pardon me if I don’t jump to the head of the line to thank Obama for protecting me. Just tell him I was too busy bitterly clinging to my religion.
Most Americans seem to be unaware of Obama’s extreme and indefensible stance on abortion and infanticide, which is to the left of Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy; if that is the case, we are in for some real buyer’s remorse if he is elected.
If America does not regret holding up for the highest office in the land a man who can unabashedly mandate leaving suffering babies to die of exposure in the name of unfettered abortion rights, we should take a good hard look at ourselves and see how far we have slid down a very slippery moral slope. Senator Obama and his ilk would do well to bear in mind the lesson taught to us as children in “Horton Hears a Who” by Dr. Seuss: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”