Liberal bloggers are in an uproar over an RNC mailer in NC that exposes Barack Obama on his opposition as state senator to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Is it accurate? Jill Stanek remarks:
First, view the pdf of the testimony I submitted to the IL State Senate Health & Human Services Committee in March 2003.And yes, Barack Obama was the "committee chairman."
And yes, Obama "defeated the bill with his fellow Democrats in a 6-4 party line vote."
And yes, "the United States Senate passed a virtually identical bill by a vote of 98-0" and "not a single liberal voted against it."Finally, yes, "That's right, even abortion rights activists like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton voted for Born-Alive Infant Protection that Barack Obama opposed.
You can view the mailer and decide for yourself here.
Perhaps you remember the words Barack Obama spoke about the National Right to Life as he claimed he would have supported the Federal bill that passed 98-0 in the U.S. Senate during 2002:
Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying.[snip]
So for people to suggest that I and the Illinois medical society, so Illinois doctors were somehow in favor of withholding life saving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous. It defies commonsense and it defies imagination and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive and it's an example of the kind of politics that we have to get beyond.
As noted above, it has been confirmed that Barack Obama voted against the IL Born Alive bill that was identical to the one passed overwhelmingly on the federal level and then misrepresented his vote.
In Obama's view, even a live birth is not enough to confer "human rights," in the abortion context at least.
I had not seen this mailer until encountering it on Jill Stanek's blog. As Jill Stanek indicates, the text of the mailer is accurate, except for one error that does not affect the substance of the matter. The U.S. Senate actually initially passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (as an amendment to another bill) on June 29, 2001, by a vote of 98-0. The committee meeting over which Obama presided, at which he killed a virtually identical bill, was on March 13, 2003 (not "the same year").
The U.S. Senate gave final approval to the federal bill on July 18, 2002, by unanimous consent.
Obama now claims that he did not support the bill because Illinois already had a law to protect babies who are born alive during abortions. The claim is highly misleading, because the law to which he refers did not apply at all to most of the live-birth that were occurring. The claim also conflicts with statements he made at the time (2001-2003), which show that he understood that the bill would cover babies not then currently covered, and which he opposed on pro-abortion ideological grounds. More on all this here:
http://www.nrlc.org/Election2008/Release101608.html
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)
www.nrlc.org
Legfederal//at//aol-dot-com