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To go to the NRLC home page, click
here.
What follows is a release from the
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in Washington, D.C.,
issued Thursday, October 16, 2008, at 10 AM EDT. For further
information, contact NRLC at 202-626-8820 or 202-626-8825,
or send e-mail to
Legfederal@aol.com
Obama Distorts His Abortion
Record In Third Debate
WASHINGTON -- "On partial-birth abortion and on the
rights of infants who survive abortions, Barack
Obama's answers in the third presidential debate
were highly misleading," commented Douglas Johnson,
longtime legislative director for the National Right
to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation's largest
pro-life organization.
--
The Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
(BAIPA) was a simple three-sentence bill to
establish that every baby who achieved "complete
expulsion or extraction" from the mother, and who
showed defined signs of life, was to enjoy the legal
protections of a "person." As a state senator,
Obama led the opposition to this bill in 2001, 2002,
and 2003. On March 13, 2003, Obama killed the bill
at a committee meeting over which he presided as
chairman. In the October 15 debate, Obama said,
"The fact is that there was already a law on the
books in Illinois that required providing lifesaving
treatment." This claim is highly misleading. The
law "on the books," 720 ILCS 510.6, on its face,
applies only where an abortionist declares before
the abortion that there was "a reasonable likelihood
of sustained survival of the fetus outside the
womb." But humans are often born alive a month or
more before they reach the point where such
"sustained survival" – that is, long-term survival –
is likely or possible (which is often called the
point of "viability"). When Obama spoke against the
BAIPA on the Illinois Senate floor in 2001 -- the
only senator to do so -- he didn't even claim that
the BAIPA was duplicative of existing law. Rather,
he objected to defining what he called a "previable
fetus" as a legal "person" -- even though the bill
clearly applied only to fully born infants. These
events are detailed in an August 28, 2008
NRLC White Paper
titled "Barack Obama’s Actions and Shifting Claims
on the Protection of Born-Alive Aborted Infants -–
and What They Tell Us About His Thinking on
Abortion," which contains numerous hyperlinks to
primary sources.
--
Because 720 ILCS 510.6 gives complete discretion to
the abortionist himself, and because a 1993 consent
decree issued by a federal court nullified key
provisions (such as the definition of "born alive"),
the law was so riddled with loopholes as to be
virtually unenforceable even with respect
to babies who had clearly achieved the capacity for
long-term survival. During Obama's time in the
state Senate there were bills (other than the BAIPA)
to close some of these loopholes in order to provide
more effective protections for post-viable abortion
survivors. Obama opposed those bills, too. On
April 4, 2002, Obama opposed a bill (SB 1663) that
would have more strictly defined the circumstances
under which the presence of a second physician (to
care for a live-born baby) would be required during
a post-viability abortion; Obama argued that this
would "burden the original decision of the woman and
the physician to induce labor and perform an
abortion . . . [I]t’s important to understand that
this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live
births."
--
In the debate, Obama said that the state BAIPA
"would have helped to undermine Roe v. Wade."
To evaluate this claim, one must examine the actual
language of the BAIPAs. The original 2001 bill was
only three sentences long; the third sentence was as
follows: "(c) A live child born as a result of an
abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person
and accorded immediate protection under the
law." As recently as August 19, 2008, the
Obama campaign issued a memo in which it singled out
that sentence as "Language Clearly Threatening
Roe." This claim is consistent with Obama's 2001
argument that a "previable fetus" should not be
regarded as a person, even when born alive.
-- At the March 13, 2003 committee meeting over
which Obama presided, the "immediate protection"
clause was removed and replaced with the "neutrality
clause" copied from the federal BAIPA, which said
explicitly that the bill had no bearing on the legal
status of any human "prior to being being born
alive." Obama then led the committee Democrats in
voting down the bill, anyway. For years afterwards,
Obama claimed that the state BAIPA had lacked the
"neutrality clause," and on August 16, 2008,
Obama said that NRLC was "lying" when we said
otherwise. This dispute was reviewed by both
FactCheck.org and
Politifact.org,
both of which came down on NRLC's side. To read the
original 2001 Illinois BAIPA side-by-side with the
amended 2003 version -- both of which Obama voted
against -- click
here.
--
In the presidential debate, Senator John McCain
accurately noted that Obama had opposed Illinois
legislation to ban partial-birth abortions. This is
true -- indeed, during his primary contest with
Hillary Clinton, Obama's supporters presented
detailed accounts lauding his leadership in
opposing legislation to ban partial-birth abortion,
afford legal protection to born-alive babies, and
require parental notification for abortion.
(Under Article IV, Section 8 of the Illinois
Constitution, the effect of voting "present" on the
Illinois Senate floor is exactly the same as voting
"no.") In his response to McCain in the debate,
Obama said, "I am completely supportive of a ban on
late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as
long as there's an exception for the mother's health
and life, and this did not contain that exception."
Here, Obama packed two distortions into a single
sentence. First, Obama is using the phrase "late
term" to refer to the third trimester of pregnancy.
It has long been established that the great majority
of partial-birth abortions are performed in the
fifth and sixth months;
these are babies developed enough to be born alive
(hence the term "partial birth"), but are not "late
term" in the sense that the phrase is used by
pro-abortion advocates. Secondly,
the Supreme Court has defined the term "health"
to include, in the abortion context, "all factors --
physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the
woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the
patient."
--
Obama is a cosponsor of the so-called "Freedom
of Choice Act" (FOCA) (S. 1173), which would
nullify all state and federal laws that "interfere
with" access to abortion before "viability" (as
defined by the abortionist). The bill would also
nullify all state and federal laws that "interfere
with" access to abortion after viability if deemed
to enhance "health." Because the term "health" is
not qualified in the bill, no state would be allowed
to exclude any "health" justification whatever for
post-viability abortions, because to do so would
impermissibly narrow a federally guaranteed
right. In short, the FOCA would establish a federal
"abortion right" broader than Roe v. Wade
and, in the words of the National Organization for
Women, "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws
[and] policies." The chief sponsors and advocacy
groups backing the legislation have acknowledged
that it would make partial-birth abortion legal
again, nullify state parental notification laws, and
require the state and federal governments to fund
abortions.
--
Speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on
July 17, 2007,
Obama said, "The first thing I'd do as president
is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first
thing that I'd do."
--
In the presidential debate, Obama said, "But there
surely is some common ground when both those who
believe in choice and those who are opposed to
abortion can come together" -- for example, by
"helping single mothers if they want to choose to
keep the baby." Yet, Obama advocates cutting
off all federal aid to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).
Across the nation, CPCs provide all manner of
assistance to women who are experiencing crisis
pregnancies, and they save the lives of many
children. There is a very modest amount of federal
funding going to such centers in some states.
Pro-life lawmakers have pushed legislation to
greatly expand such funding, but it has been blocked
by lawmakers allied with the abortion lobby. Late
in 2007, RHrealitycheck.org, a prominent
pro-abortion advocacy website (representing the side
hostile to such funding), submitted in writing the
following question to the Obama campaign: "Does
Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for
crisis pregnancy centers?" The Obama campaign's
written response was short, but it spoke volumes:
"No."
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