Hamilton, Madison, and Jay

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Location: Mesa, Arizona, United States

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Tuesday, January 8, 2008

New controversy for Obama?

Terrence Jeffrey makes the case, and it's one that sickens us both:

Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.

He is so pro-abortion that he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons."

"Persons," of course, are guaranteed equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment.

In 2004, U.S. Senate-candidate Obama mischaracterized his opposition to this legislation. Now, as a presidential frontrunner, he should be held accountable for what he actually said and did about the Born Alive Infants Bill.

State and federal versions of this bill became an issue earlier this decade because of "induced labor abortion." This is usually performed on a baby with Down's Syndrome or another problem discovered on the cusp of viability. A doctor medicates the mother to cause premature labor. Babies surviving labor are left untreated to die.

Jill Stanek, who was a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., testified in the U.S. Congress in 2000 and 2001 about how "induced labor abortions" were handled at her hospital.

"One night," she said in testimony entered into the Congressional Record, "a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived."

In 2001, Illinois state Sen. Patrick O'Malley introduced three bills to help such babies. One required a second physician to be present at the abortion to determine if a surviving baby was viable. Another gave the parents or a public guardian the right to sue to protect the baby's rights. A third, almost identical to the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act President Bush signed in 2002, simply said a "homo sapiens" wholly emerged from his mother with a "beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscles" should be treated as a "'person,' 'human being,' 'child' and 'individual.'"

Stanek testified about these bills in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, where Obama served. She told me this week he was "unfazed" by her story of holding the baby who survived an induced labor abortion.

On the Illinois Senate floor, Obama was the only senator to speak against the baby-protecting bills. He voted "present" on each, effectively the same as a "no."

"Number one," said Obama, explaining his reluctance to protect born infants, "whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a 9-month old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it 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 anti-abortion statute."

Pardon us for being unfazed by his explanation. It's bunk. Granted abortion is an issue that can only be solved by the courts; namely the same high court that overruled 29 states in 1973. That is where this issue must be re-decided. We favor an overturning of Roe purely on legal grounds. The US Supreme Court ignored the Tenth Amendment. At the time, the issue of abortion was specifically in the purview of the States, and that's where the Supreme Court should have left it.

But this doesn't change the fact that the idea that children that survive such procedures should be left to die, without any care, nurturing, or supervision by any health provider. It's barbaric. And we urge Obama supporters to ask themselves if they can be as cold-blooded as he is. His excuse doesn't wash. These children are likely not to survive. To forbid any sort of protection for the short duration of their lives shows that this man cares nothing about life at all. A child that does manage to survive the ordeal, like the one that Ms. Stanek held, lasted 45 minutes. Would he be willing to condemn that child to death without any sort of love and attention that children deserve? Obviously he does, and that should speak volumes to Democrats that may not follow lock-step with the party platform of protecting abortion.

Publius II

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