 The Case Against Barack Obama
I wasn't sure what section to put this thread in, but I went ahead and decided to put it here. While at the library last week, I ran across a book by David Freddoso titled, "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate." Much of it discussed stuff I already knew about, such as the radicals with whom he has associated (ie., William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Father Michael Pfleger), his political contradictions (ie., pledging to accept public financing for his campaigning before deciding not to), and his intimate knowledge of and participation in Chicago's machine politics. However, one part that particularly horrified me, and that I wanted to share with everyone here is Chapter 10 in the book, titled, "Abortion: Barack Obama's America." In it, Obama's stubborn refusal to support Illinois' version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which would have required hospitals to care for babies who survived botched abortions. The author used as background a true story of an abortion witnessed by nurse Jill Stanek at Christ Hospital, located in a southwest Chicago suburb. By Stanek's account, a baby who survived a prostaglandin abortion (one in which labor is induced; basically the mother's cervix is dilated, and the resulting contractions force the baby out of the uterus; the force of the contractions usually kills the baby in utero) for about 45 minutes afterward, rather than being cared for, was just left to die.
After Ms. Stanek brought this story to the press and to the state legislature, the United States Congress took up the issue. Even Barbara Boxer, one of the Senate's most famous abortion rights activists, voted in favor of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act; in fact the Senate voted 98-0 in favor of BAIPA. However, when the bill came before the Illinois legislature, care to guess who the only senator to speak out against this bill was? It was Obama. According to Obama:
"There was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit furhter, and so...this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or 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--child, an nine-month-old--chidl that was delivered to term. That determination, then, essentially if it was accepted bvy a court, would essentially bar abortions, because the e4qual protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a chidl, and if this is a child, then this would be a antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional."
Instead of a straight yes or no vote, Obama voted "present" (one of 130 such votes in his career in the Illinois Senate).
Basically, Obama's argument says that a baby that has already been born (not inside the womb, but has already been born and is breathing and moving his or her limbs) as the result of a botched aborttion, is no more a person than you or I. This position was too radical even for legendary pro abortion advocate Barbara Boxer of California.
Had the law been in effect at the time Nurse Stanek witnessed the abortion at Christ Hospital, that child would still be alive today.
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Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Benjamin Franklin | 
10-08-2009, 07:00 PM
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