"Obama's Abortion Vulnerability" &
Pro-Aborts "Unmask McCain" -- Part One of Three

Editor's note. Part Two today celebrates the continued decline in abortions in Michigan. Part Three illustrates how our pro-life behavior can influence people far beyond our immediate circle of family and acquaintances.

I trust you had a memorable Memorial Day, taking time to remember the brave men and women who have served our country. And because it's been a few days since we talked last, there is much to discuss. So let me get right to it.

The quotations that lead Part One are from the headlines to columns written by Philip Gailey, the Editor of Editorials for the St. Petersburg Times, and Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, respectively. Both are pro-abortion.

Gailey simultaneously lays out Sen. Barack Obama's extremist anti-life positions and attempts to minimize their electoral significance. Huffington's is a call to arms to any Hillary Clinton supporter who is considering not voting for Obama, if he is the Democrats' presidential nominee. Pro-life Senator John McCain, she warns, is your worst nightmare.

Gailey lays out various defenses Obama has used to explain away his maneuvering on a potentially explosive subject, one few people know anything about. Before that, however, Gailey misstates one component of Obama's voting record.

Obama could not have voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, as Gailey says, because he was not in the Senate at the time the bill was passed and signed into law by President Bush. It is true that Obama hammered the Supreme Court when the Court upheld the Act in April 2007. Thus Gailey has the spirit correct--as Obama said, he was "extremely concerned" by Gonzales v. Carhart--but not the vote itself.

But Gailey spends most of his column trying to figure out a way to excuse Obama for doing everything possible as an Illinois state Senator to delay and then kill a bill that would have made sure that a baby who survives an abortion receives the same care as a baby who spontaneously is born premature.

Gailey quotes Obama as saying he was concerned that Illinois' Born Alive Infant Protection Act "would essentially bar abortions." This was particularly disingenuous, given the reach of Roe v. Wade and the pro-abortion makeup of the United States Supreme Court at the time.

Senate Democrats voiced a similar objection to a federal version of the bill--the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Once that was cleared up, "the measure passed without opposition" in the United States Senate, according to Gailey

Then followed this whopper: "Obama later said he would have voted for that bill." Even by pro-abortion standards, this completely misleading statement is beyond the pale.

In 2003 Obama was chair of the Illinois senate's Health and Human Services Committee. It was Obama who stopped the senate sponsor from adding a clarifying paragraph from the federal act to make the federal and state bills absolutely identical! And few know that it was Obama who prevented the measure from even being voted on in his committee!

And, as you would expect, Gailey doesn't mention the many other components of Obama's inglorious pro-abortion record as a United States senator.

Huffington's in a panic that if Obama is the party's presidential nominee, some Democrats (presumably women for the most part) might vote for McCain or sit out the election. That is why she wrote. "Unmasking McCain: His Reactionary Record on Reproductive Rights."
The operative paragraph is quoted below.

"You'd rather vote for John McCain, a man who has a 25-year history of voting against a woman's right to choose? A man who over the last eight years that NARAL has released a pro-choice scorecard has received a 0 percent rating (in his time in office, Obama has received a 100 percent rating)? A man whose campaign website says he believes Roe v. Wade 'must be overturned'? A man who has vowed that, as president, he will be 'a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement'?"

To which Huffington adds, "What's more, McCain has made it very clear that if he becomes president he will appoint judges in the Scalia, Roberts, Alito mold."

These two columns help us understand two important truths. First, when pro-abortionists cannot hermetically seal Obama's anti-life voting record and store it out of sight, they pretend he's really just a "moderate." Second, pro-abortionists know that McCain is solidly pro-life on abortion. We need to make sure all our people know this truth as well.

Part Two: Number of Abortions in Michigan Goes Down
Part Three: Your Life-Affirming Impact Can Transcend Three Degrees of Separation