OBAMA AND INFANTICIDE

Thursday, August 21, 2008

David Reinhard

The Oregonian

 Ever wonder how Barack Obama, the great healer, ended up with a more radical record on abortion than Sen. Hillary Clinton or even the zealots at NARAL Pro-Choice America? It comes down to the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act." The bill was designed to provide legal protection for babies born alive during an abortion. Babies like the ones ex-nurse Jill Stanek saw discarded and left for dead at her hospital. The experience moved her to push for "Born Alive" legislation in Illinois, but Obama voted against the legislation -- three times.

Congress passed the federal "Born Alive" bill in 2002 without one opposing vote. Not even NARAL opposed the legislation, which President Bush signed into law with Stanek in attendance.

Why couldn't Obama, who talks about reaching across the aisle, find it in his heart to tiptoe onto this vast common ground to help the least among us? He's said since 2003 that he was all for "Born Alive" protection and that he would have voted for the federal bill if he had been in Congress; the problem was that the Illinois legislation didn't include the federal act's "neutrality clause." This clause limited the protection to infants born alive. It was a substantively pointless but politically crucial provision, since it addressed abortion-rights advocates' fears that the act might undercut Roe v. Wade's abortion right. (Substantively pointless because the bill applies only to an infant born alive and not a fetus or baby in utero.)

Here's the problem with Obama's explanation: The National Right to Life Committee has unrefuted records from the Illinois Legislature that prove it has no basis in fact. State Sen. Obama voted against a version of the act that contained a "neutrality clause" lifted from the federal legislation. In fact, as chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, Obama voted to include it in the state legislation before joining the committee majority in killing the whole bill.

It's often said that it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. Here, it's the crime and the cover-up. Misrepresenting the reasons for a key vote is the cover-up. Opposing efforts to help babies born alive in botched abortions is the crime -- enabling infanticide.

Obama said last weekend that determining where life begins is "above my pay grade." Surely, however, he recognizes the life of a baby born alive during an abortion is not above his pay grade. And yet he chose to kill a bill offering legal protection to these lives -- even when it included a provision that satisfied the most radical abortion-rights champions.

At the risk of committing blasphemy, you have to ask: What's with this guy? Does he think nobody will notice this kind of thing?

It doesn't end there. Last weekend, the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody asked about the issue. "I hate to say that people are lying," Obama said, "but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill. . . . That was not the bill that was presented at the state level."

He called the National Right to Life Committee liars, but they have produced the documents. One is the Illinois "Born Alive" bill Obama opposed, with this neutrality clause: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section."

Here's the federal clause: "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section."

I'll let others say Obama is lying about his position on the legislation. I won't use Obama's verbiage. It's enough to say that in charging the National Right to Life with lying about his record, Obama was bearing false witness.

Right after the Brody interview aired, the Obama camp admitted to The New York Sun that he had voted against a "Born Alive" bill with the neutrality clause. Which prompts two questions:

When will the media start chastising Obama for such fast-talking? How could Obama have voted to deny legal protection to these "born alive" babies?

David Reinhard, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8152 or davidreinhard@news.oregonian.com