While reading a recent (October 1) issue of National Review this morning, I came across this fact. (I was aware that Obama had voted against the Born Alive Act, but I was not aware that he had expressed these feelings about full-born babies).
Democrats on both sides of their internal debate saw Barack Obama as an ally as he ran for president. He had a very strongly pro-abortion record—but his campaign, with the help of a compliant media, made that record look murkier than it was. While he was a state senator in Illinois, a nurse had reported that in her hospital infants routinely survived attempted abortions and were abandoned to die. The state attorney general said that existing law did not cover these cases, and legislation was proposed to fill the gap. Obama opposed the legislation.
When he ran for president, his campaign and his apologists claimed, as they do even today, that he opposed the law because it duplicated existing law, or because it required doctors to make extraordinary efforts to save the affected infants, or because it did not include language clarifying that it should be read so as to pose no conflict with Roe v. Wade. None of these excuses were valid: One of the versions of the law Obama opposed included that no-threat-to-Roe language, for example. He explained the real reason for his opposition: He did not believe that the law should recognize human beings before “viability” as having a right to life, even if they were entirely outside their mothers’ bodies. |
