The abortion debate took an interesting turn.

Obama has been under fire for a while over his prior votes on abortion so it was obvious that would come up in the Saddleback interview.

When asked when a fetus gains human rights status, Obama took a clear stand:  Ask someone else.  ¹

Obama says pointed abortion query “above his pay grade”

DALLAS - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama side-stepped a pointed query about abortion on Saturday by “mega-pastor” Rick Warren during a televised forum.

Asked at what point a baby gets “human rights,” Obama, who strongly supports abortion rights, said: “… whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question  with specificity … is above my pay grade.”

He went on to reiterate his view that it was important to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

He is right in the sense that the root issue of abortion is unwanted pregnancies.  But that does not change the fact that you still need to answer the question and define the nature of life if you want to justify abortion.

The issue at hand is when an abortion is performed and the fetus is delivered alive.  A law requiring medical care to be given to such fetuses was voted down with the help of Obama.  In fact he opposed it directly for three years.

The issue seems pretty simple really.  if life begins at birth, a failed abortion that results in a live “birth” qualifies.  At the least some attempt should be made to save the life,

Obama’s response to his gaffe has been his typical tap dance nuance.²

The other email 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 said that 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.

but that seems to fly at odds with his actions: ³

“Number one,” said Obama, explaining his reluctance to protect born infants, “whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the 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 — a child, a 9-month old — child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it 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.”

That June, the U.S. Senate voted 98-0 in favor of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (although it failed to become law that year). Pro-abortion Democrats supported it because this language was added: “Nothing in this section 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.”

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer explained that with this language the “amendment certainly does not attack Roe v. Wade.”

On July 18, 2002, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called for the bill to be approved by unanimous consent. It was.

That same year, the Illinois version of the bill came up again. Obama voted “no.”

In 2003, Democrats took control of the Illinois Senate. Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services committee. The Born Alive Infant bill, now sponsored by Sen. Richard Winkel, was referred to this committee. Winkel also sponsored an amendment to make the Illinois bill identical to the federal law, adding — word for word — the language Barbara Boxer said protected Roe v. Wade. Obama still held the bill hostage in his committee, never calling a vote so it could be sent to the full senate.

A year later, when Republican U.S. senate candidate Alan Keyes challenged Obama in a debate for his opposition to the Born Alive Infant Bill, Obama said: “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. I would have voted for that bill.”

In fact, Obama had personally killed exactly that bill.

So it seems he wants it both ways.  He only opposed it for the risk of overturning Roe Wade, a position I personally think is specious, and then when it was protected from any chance of that, he opposed it anyway.

The reality, it seems to me is that Obama, like many Democrats will oppose any legislation that in any way defines a fetus as being alive.  Protection of Roe Wade is paramount.

I thought this campaign would center around spending, oil or the war, but now it is again spiraling into a debate over abortion.

And Obama while trying to present himself as a moderate on the issue, only succeeded in making himself look even farther left:⁴

Mr. Obama’s flip-sounding response did not go over well with the evangelicals in the audience of Saturday night’s presidential forum. After a week in which the Democrats have been renegotiating their abortion platform, Mr. Obama was supposed to provide a voice of clarity, and above all moderation, for the party. His middle-of-the-road views were supposed to appeal to independent-minded Catholics and evangelicals who agreed with Democrats on some issues, but couldn’t pull the lever for him if he was too radical on abortion.

It didn’t work out that way. Add Mr. Obama’s recent admission that during his time in the Illinois legislature he voted against a law protecting babies who survive an abortion procedure, and it seems as if the Democrats have accomplished the impossible: They have moved to the left on abortion.

On the party’s platform, the Democrats dropped the words “safe, legal and rare,” the phrase used most famously by both Bill and Hillary Clinton to signal moderation on the issue. The Democrats also added the modifier “unequivocally” to strengthen their support for abortion rights. As if there were any doubt about the message that these changes send to the party’s radical factions, here is feminist Linda Hirshman celebrating in a piece for Slate: “With the release of the new platform, the emancipation of women may once again become a legitimate political position.”

..

What did Mr. Obama add to this mix? On Saturday, he may have tugged at the heartstrings of some in the audience with his statement that women don’t make the decision to abort “casually,” that they “wrestle” with it.

But, as with many other issues, the Democrats have framed this as an issue in which poverty and other factors beyond people’s control have forced them into making questionable decisions. If only they had more money and universal health care, the logic goes, things might be different.

Typical nanny government philosophy, really. 

I leave you with this testimony about the Live Protection Act Obama opposed.⁵

Nurse’s Testimony shocks Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee

SPRINGFIELD, IL, March 27, 2001 (RFM NEWS)  EXCLUSIVE  RFM News has exclusively obtained a written transcript of Nurse Jill Stanek’s written testimony before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.  Stanek, a labor and delivery nurse at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois, was first to expose an abortion procedure which many are calling “live-birth abortion.” 

Stanek will appear in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon in Springfield.  Following is a transcript of Mrs. Stanek’s testimony.

*****

I am a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for the past 5-1/2 years. Christ Hospital performs abortions during the second and even third trimesters of pregnancy.

The abortion method being called into question that Christ Hospital and other Illinois hospitals practice is called “induced labor abortion.” This abortion technique sometimes results in infants being aborted alive. In the event that an infant is aborted alive at Christ Hospital, she or he is given no medical assessments or care whatsoever, but is left to die.

The induced labor abortion procedure can be performed using a couple different medications, but the goal always is to cause a pregnant woman’s cervix to open so that she will deliver a premature baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward. At Christ Hospital the physician inserts a medication called Cytotec into the mother’s birth canal next to the cervix. The cervix is the opening at the bottom of the uterus that normally stays closed until a mother is about 40 weeks pregnant and ready to deliver. But Cytotec irritates the cervix and stimulates it to open early.  When this happens, the pre-term baby drops out of the uterus, sometimes alive.

In the event that a baby is aborted alive at Christ Hospital, he or she is not given any medical care, but is rather given what my hospital calls “comfort care.” “Comfort care” is defined as keeping the baby warm in a blanket until the baby dies, although until recently even this was not always done. The baby is then offered to the parents to hold until he or she dies.

If the parents do not want to hold their dying aborted baby, as is most often the case, it is left to nursing staff or support staff on the floor to hold the baby until he or she dies.  And, until this past December, when staff did not have time or the desire to hold the baby, the baby was taken to our Soiled Utility Room and left there alone to die.  Christ Hospital’s comfort care policy, #WHS492, only requires that live aborted babies be checked for signs of life once an hour, or “as needed in order to verify time of death.”

It is not uncommon for a live aborted babies to linger for an hour or two or even longer.   At Christ Hospital, one of these babies once lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift.  Last year alone, of the 13 babies that I am aware of who were aborted at Christ Hospital, at least four lived between 1-1/2 to 3 hours, two boys and two girls. Christ Hospital says that it compassionately aborts babies with very serious mental or physical handicaps.  But Christ Hospital will also abort for life or health of the mother.  So at least two of the second-trimester babies who were aborted last year, for instance, were completely healthy.

One night, a nursing coworker was taking an aborted Down’s Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about ½ pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had — trying to breathe.

Toward the end, he was so quiet that I couldn’t tell if he was still alive, unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken.

Other coworkers have told me about incidences of live aborted babies whom they have cared for. A Support Associate told me about a live aborted baby who was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room, wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown into the garbage, and when they later were going through the trash to find the baby, the baby fell out of the towel and on to the floor. A nursing coworker told me about an incident she was involved in last spring that she said “I just can’t stop thinking about.” She participated in the abortion of a healthy 23-1/7 week baby who was given no medical assessments or care after delivery, but was allowed to languish for 2-1/2 hours until she died, even though she showed early signs of thriving.

Just three weeks after this baby was aborted, another mother came to the hospital under similar circumstances, carrying an identically aged baby, and she was offered the same options.  But she said that she wanted her baby.  And so present at her delivery – because Christ Hospital is a Level III mother/baby care hospital — was a neonatologist, a pediatric resident, a pediatric nurse, and a respiratory therapist – all assigned specifically to take care of that little girl at delivery.  And for the two days that I tracked her, that little girl lived. Christ Hospital is one of only 11 hospitals that the State of Illinois has designated as a level III perinatal institution — its highest ranking — which means that Christ Hospital is considered to have both the best equipment and the most highly trained medical personnel care for the sickest of the sick mothers and babies.

Another nurse friend told me about the patient she was caring for who had chosen to abort her second trimester baby, having been told that the boy had gross internal and external fetal anomalies.  When her baby was aborted alive, however, he looked fine.  The mother became hysterical and screamed for someone to help her baby. A neonatologist was called over, but told the family that the baby had been born too early to help.  The mother was so traumatized that she had to be tranquilized, and it was left to the grandparents to hold the little baby boy the ½ hour that he lived.

Last July, I was asked to testify before the U. S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution regarding the babies I knew about who were aborted alive and left to die at Christ Hospital.  Another nurse who worked at the hospital, but who has since moved to Virginia, Allison Baker, also agreed to testify.  Allison described walking into the Soiled Utility Room on two separate occasions to find babies left naked on a scale and the metal counter.  She told about the patient, that she herself had, who didn’t know that her aborted baby might be born alive, and after he was taken to the Soiled Utility Room she kept asking, “Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?”

Allison and I were called to testify in Washington in regard to a bill called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. This bill simply clarifies an apparently confusing tenet — that any baby born alive, completely separated from his or her mother, whether through abortion or not, has the same rights as American citizen human beings that you and I have.   This would include the right to medical assessments and care — and not just “comfort care” when a baby is not wanted.

The Born Alive Infants Protection Act flew through the Judiciary Subcommittee, which had some well-known pro-choice congresspersons on it such as Jerry Nadler and Maxine Waters. It then passed in the House by a large vote of 380-15.  Almost everyone on both sides of the abortion debate clearly saw that what was being discussed was infanticide. It was still confounding that 15 Congresspersons could vote against this bill in favor of infanticide, but they did.   World Magazine listed these people and called them “the Fanatical Fifteen.” The congressional session did end before this bill could be introduced in the Senate last autumn and still stands to be reintroduced in the House very soon.

Meanwhile, here in Illinois, life and death go on. Four months ago, Christ Hospital unveiled its “Comfort Room.”  So now I can no longer say that live aborted babies are left in our Soiled Utility Room to die.  We now have this prettily wallpapered room complete with a First Foto machine, baptismal gowns, a footprinter, and baby bracelets, so that we can offer keepsakes to parents of their aborted babies. There is even a nice wooden rocker in the room to rock live aborted babies to death.

It is wrong that current Illinois law mandates a doctor to pronounce a born-alive aborted baby dead but does not mandate the doctor to assess that baby for life and chances of survival. It is wrong that Illinois law mandates both birth and death certificates be issued – admitting that these aborted babies are indeed human – but does not give these babies any rights whatsoever to medical care. No other children in Illinois or America are treated this way. It is just not right that a baby should be left to die simply because her mother does not want her. It is not right that the very doctors who may be miscalculating due dates and fetal birth weights or misdiagnosing fetal handicaps are the same ones deciding that these babies should not be assessed after delivery. They’re being allowed to destroy the very evidence that might make them liable for lawsuits if they have been wrong.

What is the difference between a teen-age girl at her prom putting her unwanted baby in the garbage to die and the medical staff at a hospital putting an unwanted baby in a Comfort Room to die? There is no difference.

1. http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/2008/08/16/obama-says-pointed-abortion-query-above-his-pay-grade/ [back]
2. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7591 [back]
3. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24354 [back]
4. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121919073108155085.html?mod=rss_opinion_main [back]
5. http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Barack_Obama_Abortion.htm [back]

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