Posted on 08/23/2012 3:20:44 PM PDT by NYer
That President Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois legislature to not support a bill to provide medical care for newborns who survived failed late-term abortions is one of the key reasons pro-life voters will never support him.
Now, Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack has uncovered new audio of Obama, as a state legislator in Illinois in 2003, defending his position. Obama essentially argues that there is no need for the law because he trusts abortion practitioners to provide medical care for the baby they unsuccessfully tried to kill in an abortion.
The transcript of the video McCormack unearthed follows:
OBAMA: I just want to be clear because I think this was the source of the objections of the Medical Society. As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child – however way you want to describe it – is now outside the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that its nonviable but there’s, lets say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just out limp and dead, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. Is that correct?
OBAMA: Let me just go to the bill, very quickly. Essentially, I think, as — as this emerged during debate and during committee, the only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made an assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, lets say for the purposes of the mother’s health, is being — that — that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, or she made an error, and, in fact, that that physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical measures and practices that would be involved in saving that child. Now, if — if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I — I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects as well that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations and that, essentially, adding a — an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion. Now, if that’s the case – and –and I know that some of us feel very strongly one way or another on that issue – that’s fine, but I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after. Thank you, Mr. President.”
Yesterday, McCormack uncovered an old video from 2003, when President Barack Obama was running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, in which he defends his position favoring late-term abortions.
As an Illinois state senator, Obama was so supportive of late-term abortions, he resisted efforts to protect unborn children born alive after failed abortion procedures.
When Obama opposed a bill to stop infanticide as a member of the Illinois legislature, he said he did so because it reportedly contained language that would have contravened the Roe v. Wade decision. However, documents uncovered during the 2008 election show Obama has misrepresented his position.
Obama, as a member of the Illinois Senate, opposed a state version of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a measure that would make sure babies who survive abortions are given proper medical care.
It also protected babies who were “aborted” through a purposeful premature birth and left to die afterwards.
On the federal level, pro-abortion groups withdrew their opposition to the bill after a section was added making sure it did not affect the status of legal abortions in the United States. Ultimately, the bill was approved on a unanimous voice vote with even leading pro-abortion lawmakers like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry backing it.
When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his opponent criticized him for supporting infanticide by voting against the Illinois version of the bill. Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state bill because it lacked the neutrality clause found in the federal version.
As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, “Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal.”
During Obama’s 2008 run for President, he repeated those claims.
Documents obtained by the National Right to Life Committee showed Obama’s claim that he would have voted for the bill had it been Roe-neutral is a false argument.
According to the documents from the Illinois legislature, Obama, as the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting concerning neutrality language that was an exact duplicate of the clause in the federal bill.
During the March 2003 committee, Obama voted in support of adding the neutrality clause, but then led his colleagues on the panel in voting down the anti-infanticide bill on a 6-4 vote.
“Barack Obama, as chairman of an Illinois state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion,” NRLC legislative director Douglas Johnson told LifeNews.com at the time.
Johnson said Obama did so “even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion.”
“Obama’s legislative actions in 2003 — denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions — were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress,” Johnson continued.
“The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose,” he concluded.
Audio: Obama argues against Born Alive legislation in IL state senate
The child attempting to play the roll of a man. That is all he is. An infant in life. An infant in knowledge. An infant in leadership. An infant in decision making. An amateur in the White House. This is what we have now. Basically, when you really look around the political landscape these days, we do not have “statesmen” or “leaders”. We are STUCK with “politicians.”
Excellent point! I hope someone does a commercial with this tape and then cuts to say something like you just said:
Can we really trust this man with the healthcare of any person in this country?
I would dig very deep to contribute to such a cause.
They probably won’t read it. My Dad is a practicing Catholic who is very anti-abortion, but somehow he found a way to rationalize a vote for Obama in 08. He said with Roe v. Wade in place Obama and McCain were functionally equivalent. Now he knows better. He likes to tell me he is not a one issue voter, to which I respond “If that one issue is killing innocent babies then you should be a one issue voter. Would you vote for someone who had been convicted of killing an adult by shooting them in the head at point blank range? If you wouldn’t, then you can’t vote for Obama”.
Romney has a crummy record on abortion, but Obama’s record on Infant Born Alive legislation for me makes him a truly evil human being. Think about it - a baby is born alive, struggling to survive, and is just left in a disposal room to die. Obama supported that. There was a story in 08 where a nurse in Illinois recalled a story where an aborted baby was born alive, was left to die, she held the baby in an attempt to comfort the baby as it struggled for its life, eventually dying. Obama opposed the legislation that would prevent this from happening. Then he lied about it, as outlined in the article above. Words fail.
Right. Obama wants to make sure that there was a legitimate murder committed.
On March 12-13, 2003, the Illinois state senate committee chaired by Senator Barack Obama amended the proposed state Born-Alive Infants Protection bill (SB 1082) to exactly track the language of the already-enacted federal BAIPA, by adopting Senate Amendment No. 1, 10-0. The committee then voted to kill the amended bill, 6-4, with Obama and the other Democrats on the committee voting against it. The bill that Obama and his colleges voted to kill, as amended, was virtually identical to the federal law. The entirely non-substantive points at which the state bill language still differed from the federal law are shown in brackets below (except we have ignored differences in capitalizing).
There are even sicker people - look up Peter Singer and other sickos who believe that a parent should have the right to terminate a child up to 1 month after they are born if it interferes with the quality of the parents life.
I don’t know too many parents whose quality of life isn’t affected by a new baby, the thought of killing them is just horrid.
Satan is the only answer to this evil.
I doubt Romney or the RNC would ever touch something this controversial, but it would be perfect for an independent ad by a pro-life pac: imagine the line below repeated several times (along with a graphic providing a tally of all the black children aborted during Obama’s time in government):
” . . . if that fetus, or child – however way you want to describe it – is now outside the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that its nonviable but there’s, lets say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just out limp and dead . . . they’re not just out limp and dead . . . they’re not just out limp and dead . . . “
If you think the donkey’s howled like stuck pigs after the ads pointing out how BO gutted welfare reform, imagine how’d they’d respond to an ad describing Obama’s view of infant abortion survivors.
Did he support “legitimate murder”?
Every issue she agrees with my wife, her daughter and I but she always sees to find some excuse to vote Dem, however she has said she will not vote this time for obama.
I've just been speaking to my oldest 14 and my wife about this and explained what he did not vote for and what he wanted.
It truly is sick, could there not be a group which would put an AD up telling the public how abortions are done and what obama would do if that child survived the abortion.?
My oldest is with the sheriff explorers and so learns many aspects of the law.
He asked me why is it that if a pregnant woman is killed then the murderer is done for two murders, the baby and the mother but if a mother kills her child then some seem fit to say that is alright.
He has a great point but shame that some adults cannot see this.
I'll be honest I;m middle aged and never cared less about abortion or even the homo's but as I had children and especially as I raised my boys to be future men and fathers then I looked as life differently.
Agree. Chilling to any normal hu,an being and worse than the rape gaffe.
“There are even sicker people - look up Peter Singer and other sickos who believe that a parent should have the right to terminate a child up to 1 month after they are born if it interferes with the quality of the parents life.”
That is disgusting! Like the parents have bought a new TV and after 30 days they decide it doesn’t fit the decor of the living room and take it back. We are doomed as a society lost in a sea of egoism and materialism.
This one goes even beyond Peter Singer:
Pro-abort prof argues babies not ‘persons’ til 18 months, not an ‘offense’ against child to kill it
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2687304/posts
That is real. I am an Army Vet, Korea and Vietnam, father of four and when you raise them to be responsible adults you see things differently.
I agree, and joined by the all the priests who administer sacraments to Nancy Pelosi and her ilk
If the hospital refuses care (even with permission by Obama's policy) to an infant born alive, isn't that negligence and child abuse? Murder is a crime. If the "definition" of life changes, it doesn't change that all along it has been murder and neglect.
There is a better example to tie in with this audio, someone who has survived an attempted abortion.
Melissa is the survivor of a failed saline infusion abortion in 1977 (copies of her medical records that document the abortion meant to end her life can be viewed on this website’s picture page). Despite the initial concerns regarding Melissa’s future after surviving the attempt to end her life and being born alive at approximately seven months gestation, she has not only survived but thrived. With a Master’s Degree in Social Work, she has worked in the fields of substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence/sexual assault counseling, and child welfare. Melissa and her husband Ryan have a daughter, Olivia, whose birth at the same hospital where Melissa’s life was supposed to end has significantly shaped Melissa’s ministry.
Planned Parenthood Supporters Mock Abortion Survivor (Live Action News - 3/19/2012)
Invite her to the 2012 GOP convention.
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