Posted on 01/16/2008 6:36:43 AM PST by Kaslin
Last week, I wrote that Barack Obama, as an Illinois state senator, opposed a bill to define as a "person" a fully born baby who survived an abortion. Obama opposed this bill, I wrote, even after an amendment was offered to it that mirrored language included in a virtually identical federal bill that won a 98 to zero vote in the U.S. Senate after Sen. Barbara Boxer said the language in question protected Roe v. Wade.
Obama, I reported, killed the Illinois bill by holding it in a committee he chaired, never calling a vote so it could be sent to the full Senate. This, I have since been informed, was incorrect.
Although the Illinois General Assembly's online bill tracking system indicates the bill was "held" in Obama's Health and Human Services Committee in 2003, former Sen. Rick Winkel, who sponsored it, and Sen. Dale Righter, then the committee's ranking Republican, both tell me that written records kept by Illinois Senate Republicans indicate Obama did bring the bill up for a vote and then voted against it. The bill, as amended, lost that vote four to six. In 2001, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum offered the federal version of the Born Alive Infants bill as an amendment. Boxer gave a floor speech explaining why it did not threaten Roe and why Democrats would vote for it.
"(H)is amendment certainly does not attack Roe in any way," said Boxer. "His amendment makes it very clear that nothing in this amendment gives any rights that are not yet afforded to a fetus. Therefore, I, as being a pro-choice senator on this side, representing my colleagues here, have no problem whatsoever with this amendment."
When Obama was in the Illinois Senate, the Born Alive Infants bill came up three successive years.
In 2001, three bills were proposed to help babies who survived induced labor abortions. One, like the federal Born Alive Infants bill, simply said a living "homo sapiens" wholly emerged from his mother should be treated as a "'person,' 'human being,' 'child' and 'individual.'"
On all three bills, Obama voted "present," effectively the same as a "no." Defining "a pre-viable fetus" that survived an abortion as a "person" or "child," he argued, "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."
In 2002, Obama voted "no" on the bill.
When Democrats took control of the Illinois Senate in 2003, Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. The Born Alive Infants bill and an amendment to add exactly the language Boxer said protected Roe in the federal bill (which President Bush had signed into law in 2002) was referred to this committee.
According to the records made by committee Republicans, the amendment to include in the Illinois bill the language Boxer said protected Roe was approved by a 10 to zero vote of the committee. (This vote, Republicans say, was a common procedural courtesy extended to the sponsoring senator.) The bill as amended was then put to a committee vote. It lost four to six, with Obama voting "no."
"I just read a copy of the Illinois Senate Republican Staff analysis on SB 1082 (93rd General Assembly), and, contrary to the bill status report on the Illinois General Assembly Website, it shows the bill -- as amended -- was in fact called for a vote in committee on a motion to recommend the bill for passage to the whole Senate," former Sen. Winkel, now an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, wrote me in an email. "That motion failed 4-6-0 along party lines, and the chairman, then state Sen. Barack Obama, voted no. The result is that the bill died in the committee."
Righter backed up Winkel's explanation of the Republican records. "If I want to see a vote history in committee on a certain bill, I will go to our records first," Righter told me. "Now, another source of information is the online service that you checked, as well. The online service in this case is rather vague. It just says that the bill never made it out of committee. But I have full faith and confidence in what our files show, absolutely."
In his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama was challenged on his opposition to the Born Alive Infants bill during a debate with Alan Keyes. "At the federal, level there was a similar bill that passed because it had an amendment saying this does not encroach on Roe v. Wade," Obama said. "I would have voted for that bill."
This statement seems to contradict the record made by committee Republicans, attested to by Winkel and Righter, which says he directly voted against the bill that included the amendment with the Roe-protecting language from the federal bill. "The amendment made my bill the same as the federal legislation," Winkel told me.
Obama's campaign press office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
It takes some severe ideological blinders (or just plain EVIL) to look at a fully formed baby and wonder “if this is a child”.
As opposed to "an excised tumor," "some extraneous matter" or "a tunafish sandwhich?"
I recall this little riddle, attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog?
Five?
No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.
And calling a child something other than a child don't make it something other than a child. Even if you're a democrat.
Especially when he's a father of two.
To the ardent abortion advocate, a woman who chooses an abortion is entitled that procedure yield the requisite corpse.
Jill Staneck told congress that one of these babies lived for eight hours being dying from medical neglect.
That’s probably my favorite Lincoln story. There is tremendous wisdom in it.
I’m sure he and his wife watched excitedly as their children turned and stretched on the sonogram screen.
Then, to state that a baby, outside the womb, born alive, might not be a person or a child...
I’m reminded of someone that I argued into this position. When it got to be obvious that she was trapped into giving up her position or denying the obvious,
she put up her hand, lowered her head, and said “I don’t care - women should have the choice.”
great article. shows us all who this guy, barack, really is.
Ask Hillary if a viable 9-month child who is still partially inside the birth canal should have his head punctured with a sharp instrument and his brain sucked out with a vacuum device. She will answer with rhetoric about the mother's health and blah-blah-blah, but stick to the issue of the baby. How, in God's name (even for a secular humanist) is this remotely okay?
You’ll never get a pro-abort to directly address the morality of that “procedure”. They always will generalize and abstract away from what is actually happening.
Ah yes--the rallying cry of the liberal who refuses to be swayed by mere facts and logic.
This is just a sample of how Obama will bring the nation together. Agree or die.
You are exactly right. But, sometimes the lightbulb will go off in a spectator's head when he realizes that one side is arguing facts while the other is merely deflecting them and changing the subject. The libs end up sounding like Abbott & Costello performing "Who's On First." Except the libs aren't funny.
Witness the wonderful Santorum/Boxer debate.
Yet I they want to take away my choice of what light bulb I can use, what car I can drive, and whether or not I can smoke in my own home. How is that for continuity?
The mental contortions that someone must go through to get to that point must leave them mentally exhausted and incapable of reasoned thought.
Cognitive dissonance, the neoliberal state of mind.
Last line in the “debate”:
BOXER: I am not answering these questions.
This is what it always comes down to when you attempt to have a logical debate with a rabid pro-abort on the subject.
Also the burned babies from some solution that is used to kill them. I was horrified and just sat in my chair and cried. I thought my head would explode from the anger I felt.
Now this Born Alive Infants Act. Anyone who can vote to kill a surviving baby is just a monster to me. I’m just surprised that there has to be an “Act” to save a baby. It saddens me immensely.
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