For further information:
Federal Legislation Department
202-626-8820,
federallegislation@nrlc.org
Barack Obama, pro-abortion
extremist -- and why the news
media avoid tough scrutiny of Obama's abortion
history
This is an update from the
National Right to Life Committee in Washington,
D.C., issued Thursday, August 23, 2012.
"The new obsession is the
platform of the Republican Party on abortion,
which is an obsession,” [Republican National
Committee Chairman Reince] Priebus said
Wednesday on “On the Record with Greta Van
Susteren” on Fox News. “What about the obsession
about a guy who believes in partial-birth
abortion? I mean, what about that obsession? I
mean, why aren’t we talking about that very,
that minority view of abortion in our country
that this president holds dear to his heart?
We’re not talking about that.”
("Reince Priebus attacks Obama on abortion," by
Kevin Robillard, Politico, August 23,
2012.)
In the opinion piece below, "Obama
the abortion extremist," published today by
Politico, National Review Editor Rich
Lowry asserts, "The Democrats and the press
habitually travel in a pack, but never more so than
when a social or cultural issue is involved,
especially one touching on sexual morality. Then,
it’s not a matter of mere partisanship or a rooting
interest. It’s personal." Lowry goes on to discuss
how this hostility to the pro-life position
manifests as a proclivity for subjecting pro-life
Republican candidates to intense scrutiny on
abortion-related issues, while ignoring or glossing
over the extreme positions that Barack Obama has
taken throughout his political career on
abortion-related issues.
As the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)
observed in an August 20 release, "The mainstream
news media is again busy ginning up stories
exploring the outer parameters of the
abortion-related policy positions of pro-life
Republican candidates, even where this involves
remote, theoretical scenarios -- while demonstrating
a near-total disinterest in putting the spotlight on
the outer parameters of the 'abortion rights'
positions embraced by President Obama, even on
matters under current legislative consideration."
The August 20 NRLC release is
here.
In October, 2008, NRLC published a detailed article
examining the news media's collaboration in allowing
Obama, during the post-nomination phase of the 2008
campaign, to rewrite his history on various
abortion-related issues, including legislation
dealing with infants born alive during abortions.
The article, which is
here, also explores the news media's near-total
disinterest in examining the implications of Obama's
endorsement of the most extreme pro-abortion measure
ever proposed in Congress, the so-called "Freedom of
Choice Act," which would invalidate virtually all
state and federal limits on abortion, and
re-legalize partial-birth abortion.
An NRLC "white paper" documenting Obama's actual
history on the born-alive infants legislation is
here.
An NRLC statement on President Obama's recently
announced (but virtually unreported) opposition to
the pending legislation to ban the use of abortion
for sex selection is
here.
To view "Video: Obama Says He's
'Pro-Choice' on Third-Trimester Abortions," by John
McCormack, The Weekly Standard blog, August 22,
2012, click
here.
For further information, contact the NRLC
Federal Legislation Department at
202-626-8820 or
federallegislation@nrlc.org
[The Rich Lowry essay follows:]
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80013.html
Obama the abortion
extremist
By: Rich Lowry
August 23, 2012 04:33 AM EDT
If NARAL has a man of the year
award, it should go to Todd Akin.
Not only did the newly minted
Missouri Senate candidate express his position on
abortion in the most discrediting way possible, he
threatens Republican hopes to take the Senate. By
throwing away a winnable seat, he could preserve a
Democratic majority that will sooner desecrate the
American flag on the Senate floor than restrict
abortion in any manner.
Predictably, the Akin flap has
created a feeding frenzy. In recent days, the
national political debate has seemingly telescoped
down to the question of whether abortion should be
legal in cases of rape and incest. The Republican
platform is silent on these exceptions, while Paul
Ryan opposes them, stoking Democratic attacks and
media analysis about the renewal of the fabled “war
on women.”
The Democrats and the press
habitually travel in a pack, but never more so than
when a social or cultural issue is involved,
especially one touching on sexual morality. Then,
it’s not a matter of mere partisanship or a rooting
interest. It’s personal.
From a strictly down-the-middle,
neutral perspective, if one side of a debate is
“extreme,” the opposite and countervailing side is
equally “extreme.” It would never even occur to the
media to apply this standard to abortion. Under the
guise of upholding abortion rights, Barack Obama
could favor denying legal protection to babies after
they are born and the press wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
In fact—he did.
In the Illinois legislature, he
opposed the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act”
three times. The bill recognized babies born after
attempted abortions as persons and required doctors
to give them care. Obama’s stalwart opposition to
the bill came up during the 2008 campaign, and his
team responded with a farrago of obfuscation and
distortions.
The bill was supposedly redundant.
Except it wasn’t. Protections for infants who
survived abortions were shot through with loopholes,
which is why the bill was offered in the first
place. (Abortion doctors were leaving infants to die
without any care.) The bill was supposedly a threat
to abortion rights. Except it wasn’t. Obama opposed
a version that stipulated it didn’t affect the legal
status of infants still in the womb.
About a year after his final vote
against the bill, Obama gave his famous 2004
Democratic convention speech extolling post-partisan
moderation. But he couldn’t even bring himself to
protect infants brutalized and utterly alone in some
medical facility taking what might be only a few
fragile breaths on this Earth. Some moderation. The
federal version of the bill that he opposed in
Illinois passed the U.S. Senate unanimously. Some
post-partisanship.
President Obama is an extremist on
abortion. He has never supported any meaningful
restriction on it, and never will.
He opposed a partial-birth
abortion bill in Illinois, even as the federal
version passed the House with 282 votes and the
Senate with 64 votes and was signed into law by
President Bush in 2003. He arrived in the U.S.
Senate in time to denounce the Supreme Court’s
ruling upholding the ban.
[to read the rest of the Lowry
essay on the Politico site, click
here.]
Founded in 1968, the National
Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of 50
state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000
local chapters, is the nation's oldest and largest
grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the
flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works
through legislation and education to protect
innocent human life from abortion, infanticide,
assisted suicide and euthanasia.
