CHAREN: Infants who survive abortions

Obama is an abortion extremist. He can't help it. He was raised by socialists, early in life taught by Islamists, later mentored by communists, married by a black liberationist and more recently befriended by anarchists. He is an extreme leftist in almost every way.

Regardless of what Obama's reason's, he cannot back away from his voting record other than voting present. He did not do such in this case.

Obama "aye-d", babies died.

As legislative director for National Right to Life, I can affirm that Obama did, indeed, lead the opposition to enactment of the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act from 2001-2003 -- and he was successful in killing the Illinois legislation in the committee he chaired in 2003, even after a virtually identical bill had been enacted by Congress, without a dissenting vote, in 2002. The documentation is distilled in a National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) memo available here: http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html That memo contains numerous links to primary documemtns. Currently, Obama's defenders have fallen back on two main explanations, which were summarized by one liberal group as follows: "Obama and other opponents said the bills posed a threat to abortion rights and were unnecessary because, they said, Illinois law already prohibited the conduct that these bills purported to address." The "conduct that these bills purported to address" was, in part, credible testimony that humans were being born alive after induce-labor abortions, and were being placed in a hospital's "soiled utility room" and otherwise neglected during the time it took them to die, a few examples of which Ms. Charen has quoted. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was a simple, three-sentence proposal designed to ensure that all babies born alive during abortions would be recognized as legal persons, with a right to legal protection and appropriate care. From 2001-2003, Obama led the opposition to this legislation on articulated grounds that under his concept of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights, legal status may not be conferred on what he called the "previable fetus" who is the target of an abortion -- and that is what the bill would have done, but ONLY in cases in which such a human had achieved "complete explusion or extraction" from the mother, and was alive. These statements by Obama -- and they are multiple -- are revealing regarding the sweeping scope that he envisions for "abortion rights." The position on the scope of Roe v. Wade that Obama took in Illinois was, in substance, to "the left" of the position which any member of Congress was willing to vote to defend. Douglas Johnson Legislative Director National Right to Life Committee Washington, D.C. www.nrlc.org legfederal//at//aol.com

Obama now asserts that an old Illinois law (720 ILCS 510.6) made the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act unnecessary. But that law covered only situations where an abortionist declared before the abortion that there was “a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb.” Humans are often born alive a month or more before they reach the point where such “sustained survival” – that is, long-term survival – is likely or possible (which is often called the point of “viability”). The old Illinois law had no bearing whatever on many of the induced-labor abortions about which nurses testified before the committees in Congress and the Illinois state legislature, because many of them were performed on humans who were capable of being born alive, and who often were born alive, but who were not old enough to have a “reasonable likelihood of sustained survival [permanent survival] . . . outside the womb.” Moreover, the protections provided by the old Illinois law were very weak even for demonstrably "viable" infants; prolife lawmakers proposed other bills to strengthen the protections, but Obama opposed those bills, too. Obama recognized that his actual articulated reason for opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act -- that a living, squirming baby entirely outside the mother cannot be regarded as a legal person under his vision of Roe v. Wade, if that baby is "previable" and was born during an abortion -- would be very difficult to defend. He even told CBN's Dave Brody on August 16 that NRLC was "lying" when we asserted that as committee chairman, he had killed a bill virtually identical to the federal bill. Regarding this, a report issued by Annenberg's FactCheck.org on August 25 concluded, "Obama's claim is wrong . . . The documents from NRLC support the group's claims that Obama is misrepresenting the contents of SB 1082 [the 2003 Illinois BAIPA]." Douglas Johnson Legislative Director National Right to Life Committee

Here is the ENTIRE TEXT of the bill that Obama killed in the committee he chaired on March 13, 2003: AN ACT concerning infants who are born alive. Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly: Section 5. The Statute on Statutes is amended by adding Section 1.36 as follows: (5 ILCS 70/1.36 new) Sec. 1.36. Born-alive infant. (a) In determining the meaning of any statute or of any rule, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative agencies of this State, the words "person", "human being", "child", and "individual" include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development. (b) As used in this Section, the term "born alive", with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after that expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion. (c) Nothing in this Section [the bill] 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. Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon becoming law.