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NRL News
Obama
Tries to Hide BAIPA Votes Sometimes you wonder if the shield most of the media has erected around pro-abortion Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama can be pierced. It can, and when it is, Obama’s hypersensitivity to his true stance on life is shown loud and clear. When an ad ran that challenged him for his votes on Illinois’s Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), Obama responded guns a’ blazing. As a state Senator Obama worked overtime to throttle the measure, intended to protect babies born alive after induced abortions, and has spent the last four years trying to keep this seriously inconvenient truth buried. The ad that sparked Obama’s ire features Gianna Jessen, a young woman who survived a saline abortion 31 years ago. She tells the audience, “Four times, Barack Obama voted to oppose a law to protect babies left to die after a failed abortion. Senator Obama, please support born alive infant protections. I’m living proof these babies have a right to live.” The Obama ad went for the throat. In only 30 seconds it illustrated both just how afraid his campaign is of the impact of his votes on BAIPA will have and how willing he is to Photoshop the truth when it serves his purposes. The ad is sleazy from before you hear the first syllable out of the woman’s voice-over. Which is ironic since the ad include such zingers as “John McCain’s attacks—the sleaziest ads ever—truly vile”; “Now, votes taken out of context accusing Obama of letting infants die. It’s a despicable lie”; and “Even the bill’s Republican sponsor says it’s untrue. Obama’s always supported medical care to protect infants.” All these assertions are either demonstratively false or wrenched out of context. Personal attacks on McCain aside, the critically important objective of the Obama ad is to claim exoneration. So let’s start with the reference to the Republican sponsor of the Illinois BAIPA. The “documentation” which flashes on the screen is a footnote that cites a Chicago Tribune letter to the editor from Rick Winkel, who was an Illinois state senator from 2003 to 2007. By picking out one sentence, Obama completely misleads the viewer. In fact what Winkel wrote bears out exactly what critics of Obama’s votes on BAIPA have said. Which is • that in response to critics who said the measure was an attack on Roe v. Wade, Winkel wrote that he “added neutrality language identical to the 2001 federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act that the United States Senate approved 98 to 0.” • that all 10 members of the Illinois state Health and Human Services Committee (which Obama chaired) voted to add the amendment. And • that “Nevertheless, during the same hearing, the committee rejected the bill as amended on a vote of 4-6-0,” Winkel wrote. “Obama voted no.” Winkel said he “was stunned because the neutrality amendment addressed the concerns of opponents. It was the same neutrality language approved by U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in the federal bill.” Winkler concluded, “[T]heir zeal for pro-choice dogma was clearly the overriding force behind their negative votes.” Noteworthy is that nowhere does the ad deny that Barack Obama voted against the Illinois BAIPA.[This was not how Obama responded to NRLC’s documentation, demonstrating that he had consistently opposed the Illinois version of BAIPA. The NRLC documentation showed that in 2003, he had presided over a committee meeting at which he killed a version of the Illinois BAIPA that was virtually identical to the version that had passed Congress without a dissenting vote in 2002. Obama for years had claimed that the Illinois bill he opposed with significantly different from the federal bill. He called us “liars.” After NRLC challenged Obama to admit the documents were genuine and admit to his previous misrepresentations, FactCheck.org investigated. It concluded, “Obama’s claim is wrong...The documents...support the group’s claims that Obama is misrepresenting the contents of [Senate Bill] 1082.”] As has been pointed out many times, Obama was the only state senator to actually take the floor in both 2001 and 2002 to speak against the Illinois BAIPA. As noted above, the Obama ad begins with “one of the sleaziest ads ever” quotation flashing on the screen. The suggestion is, obviously, that this refers to the Jessen ad. But the quote is actually lifted from a TIME magazine columnist, who is totally in the tank for Obama, about an entirely different topic in a column which ran before the Jessen ad did! And not that a little thing like accuracy carries any weight, but (a) contrary to the impression left, the Jessen ad was not McCain’s; and (b) the Obama ad also misrepresents John McCain’s position on abortion. Add an indignant-sounding female voice-over to personal attacks, distortions, and gross misrepresentations and there you have it: the distilled essence of the way Barack Obama responds when cornered by an inconvenient truth. |