From Hot Air"When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent [Alan Keyes] criticized him for supporting “infanticide.” Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state BAIPA [Born Alive Infant Protection Act] because it lacked the pre-birth neutrality clause that had been added to the federal bill. 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. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. . . . The difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion...
"Obama’s entire defense is based on a brazen factual misrepresentation.
"The documents prove that in March 2003, state Senator Obama, then the chairman of the Illinois state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting in which the “neutrality clause” (copied verbatim from the federal bill) was added to the state BAIPA, with Obama voting in support of adding the revision. Yet, immediately afterwards, Obama led the committee Democrats in voting against the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4.
"The amendment with the neutrality language identical to that in the federal law is here. In the record of the vote taking on March 12, 2003, the amendment was adopted unanimously by Chairman Obama’s HHS subcommittee. That added the neutrality clause to the bill — which then went down to defeat on a party-line 6-4 vote, with Obama voting against protecting infants born alive during abortions.
"This was no academic debate. The issue arose when...Christ Hospital in the Chicago area got outed for leaving these infants to die after a nurse blew the whistle on the hospital. An investigation determined the truth of the allegations, and the Illinois legislature debated on whether infants born alive during abortions should be considered persons and require practitioners to provide care for them. Obama, even with the redundant “neutrality clause” attached to the bill, said no.
"Clearly, Obama lied about his position. It’s no small rhetorical matter, either. His vote puts him on the extreme of the pro-abortion camp, so extreme in fact that not a single member of Congress would follow his example. Obama voted to allow Christ Hospital and other facilities performing abortions to allow live children to die.*
*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.
