Obama Caught Red-Handed in Abortion Lie

 By Peter J. Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 18, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Barack Obama and National Right to Life went head-to-head over Obama's abortion record, and Obama blinked. The Democratic presidential candidate now has backed off his claims that pro-life advocates were "lying" over his vote to kill a bill that would have prevented infanticide in Illinois. Obama's campaign now acknowledges he "misrepresented" his position.

Obama's decision to sabotage the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) has repeatedly come back from the grave to haunt his campaign. Pro-life advocates, and National Right to Life, have hounded Obama over his "no" vote to BAIPA while a state senator in 2003.

BAIPA was a bill intended to clarify that any baby who is entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who shows any signs of life, is to be regarded as a legal "person" with all the rights thereto, whether or not the baby was born during an attempted abortion.

After appearing at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church on Saturday to debate John McCain, Obama sat down to an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) correspondent David Brody.

Brody asked Obama to respond to questions over why he voted "no" to BAIPA, since Obama voted down the Illinois version, which was exactly identical to a federal bill passed unanimously by the US Senate. Obama became visibly irritated and accused NRTL of "lying" about his record.

"They have not been telling the truth," Mr. Obama said. "And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."

Obama said he would have voted for a version like the federal BAIPA "even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion."

"So for people to suggest that I and the Illinois medical society, so Illinois doctors were somehow in favor of withholding life saving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous. It defies commonsense and it defies imagination and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive," said Obama.

However, twenty-four hours later, the Obama campaign made an about-face and admitted that Obama, not NRTL, had "misrepresented" his own position, which his critics have charged defies "commonsense" and "imagination."

The Obama campaign admitted to the New York Sun that Obama misrepresented his position when he told CBN that the federal version he says he supports, "was not the bill that was presented at the state level."

The campaign acknowledged Obama had voted against an identical bill in the Illinois Senate, but then said Obama was worried that even as worded, the legislation might have undermined existing Illinois abortion law.

National Right to Life posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Obama during his tenure as chairman of a Senate committee voted against a "Born Alive" bill in 2003 that contained virtually identical to the language written in the federal BAIPA. (http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/08/obama_campaign.ht...)

"The act of killing a just-born child was considered so heinous that the federal bill, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, was supported by pro-abortion Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and unopposed by NARAL, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League," said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "Senator Obama's position in the Illinois senate was to oppose any legislation that would protect such innocent life. Everyone else was clear that the bill addressed infanticide not abortion."

See the CBN interview complete text and video of the interview
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/429293.aspx

See a copy of Obama's votes on Illinois BAIPA:
http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/08/obama_campaign.ht...

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Obama Cover-up Revealed On Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/aug/08081101.html

How Babies Were Left to Die: Nurse Recounts Horrors of Infanticide Practice Barack Obama Protected
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/aug/08081209.html

Posted: July 09, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008 

A CNN reporter interviewing me a couple weeks ago about Barack Obama's opposition as state senator to the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act groaned more than once that this topic was "complicated."

She was referring to Obama's various explanations through the years for blocking Born Alive and lately his outright denial that obstructing legislation declaring live aborted babies legal persons had anything to do with endorsing their death.

I finally emailed her, "It is clear: Obama strongly opposed legislation to protect abortion survivors. This is horrible, so of course he will try to make it 'complicated,' but it is not."

Obama has recently been ratcheting up the obfuscations, which I'll get to momentarily.

Before that, a reader last week recommended I give pro-lifers uncomplicated talking points on Obama and Born Alive. Here they are:

The federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate and overwhelmingly in the U.S. House. Sens. Kennedy and Boxer even spoke in support on the Senate floor. NARAL expressed neutrality. Obama actively opposed nearly identical legislation in Illinois, the sole state senator to speak against Illinois' Born Alive two years in a row. In 2003, Obama single-handedly stopped identical legislation to the federal Born Alive Act from being introduced in the Illinois Senate as chairman of the committee vetting the bill. That legislation finally passed in 2005 – the year after Obama left the Illinois Senate – refuting his claim it was unnecessary. Overarching talking point:

Barack Obama is so radically pro-abortion he supports infanticide, as evidenced by his active opposition to the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act. This makes him further left than any U.S. senator and even NARAL.

Stick to those points while for sport observing Obama recycle lies.

For instance, Obama may have set a new record in a July 1 Relevant magazine interview, rattling four excuses in one soundbite, all previously outlined in my January 2008 column, "Obama's 10 reasons for supporting infanticide" – Nos. 1, 6, 7 and 10!

The other e-mail rumor that's been floating around is that somehow I'm unwilling to see doctors offer life-saving care to children who were born as a result of an induced abortion.

That's just false. There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the "Born Alive" bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill. The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that stated you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn't think it was going to pass constitutional muster Ever since that time, e-mails have been sent out suggesting that, somehow, I would be in favor of letting an infant die in a hospital because of this particular vote. That's not a fair characterization, and that's not an honest characterization. It defies common sense to think that a hospital wouldn't provide life-saving treatment to an infant that was alive and had a chance of survival.

Even cursory thought on Obama's statement would raise a fast red flag in an unstarstruck mind: If Born Alive were already codified in Illinois law, why did the Illinois General Assembly pass Born Alive into law the year after Obama left the state Senate?

What pants-on-fire Obama did was purposefully misrepresent Born Alive, using its name to describe the contents of another bill, as well as purposefully misrepresent Illinois abortion law.

Born Alive simply defined when personhood begins for the purpose of Illinois law. The World Health Organization created this definition in 1950, and the United Nations adopted it in 1955. Born Alive "required" nothing and was certainly not designed to overturn Roe, unless the UN and WHO divined 20+ years into the future while calculating for six degrees of separation.

Obama told Relevant it "defies common sense" that a hospital would let potentially viable babies die.

Why? If a hospital is purposefully inducing preterm labor for the express purpose of killing babies before or during delivery, it defies common sense to ignore the hospital's clear conflict of interest if those babies survive.

A person not getting that is either stupid or on the take. And Obama's not stupid.