Obama and Abortion Survivors: Clarifying the Record

Update: Barack Obama offered a refutation to the claims made in my last article. Here is the response.

Obama and Abortion Survivors: Clarifying the Record

By Paul Kengor and Jarrett Skorup


A few weeks ago at NRO we posted a piece on Barack Obama’s votes in the Illinois legislature on a statewide version of the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA)—i.e., legislation requiring medical personnel to provide treatment to infants who unexpectedly survive abortion procedures. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDI0MDJiOTM1Zjk0NjUyNWM2NzY3YTdmM2I2MWUyZDM=

Our point was to clarify the record and to add a crucial “rest of the story” that is still being missed: how this legislation sailed right through the Illinois legislature once its primary obstacle—Barack Obama—left the Illinois Senate for the U.S. Senate. In both senates, Illinois and the United States, the born-alive legislation was passed unanimously, but only in the absence of Senator Barack Obama.

This issue is now heating up, as Obama addressed the subject over the weekend in a question from CBN’s David Brody, and as talk-radio is now firmly on board. The latest is that Sean Hannity plans to interview Jill Stanek, the nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, where babies were aborted and those that survived were left to die. We interviewed Stanek at length for our article. She, too, can clarify the facts in this debate, and as an eye-witness.

Obama, hailed for being smooth and articulate, fumbles and bumbles and contradicts himself when forced to answer the simplest questions on human life, from whether life begins at conception to his votes on abortion survivors in the Illinois legislature. Here’s the latest on this issue, compliments of Obama’s remarks to Brody over the weekend:

Speaking of Evangelicals, Catholics, and the National Right to Life Committee, Brody noted to Obama that “they’re basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill [the Illinois version of BAIPA].” Obama dove right in: “Let me clarify this right now … because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying.”

Obama explained: “I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported, which was to say that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born, even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade…. So for people to suggest that I … [was] 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 and it’s an example of the kind of politics that we have to get beyond.”

Obama claimed that these “people” were “misrepresent[ing] my positions repeatedly, even after they know that they’re wrong. And that’s what’s been happening.”

What’s the true answer here? The reality is that Obama needs to admit he was wrong, that he exercised bad judgment, and deal with it. His position is not being misrepresented.

What Obama is saying is partly true. Yes, he believed that the Illinois version of BAIPA—which, we were told, was identical to the federal bill, certainly in intent—would undermine Roe v. Wade. That is indeed the reason why he opposed the legislation. He opposed the legislation not because he wanted to see abortion survivors slowly die on cold tables or in trash cans at Illinois “hospitals,” like Christ Hospital, but because he feared that passing such legislation would undermine Roe v. Wade—the holy grail of modern liberalism.

We noted precisely this in our last article. We quoted Pam Sutherland, the president of the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, who defended Obama on this exact point, “The legislation was written to ban abortion, plain and simple. Senator Obama saw the legislation, when he was there, for what it was.”

Quite the contrary, Obama did not see the legislation for what it was. He was all alone as an obstacle to the legislation. Obama had fallen for the classic red herring by the abortion industry, which argues that practically any restriction on abortion, no matter how sensible and humane, will undermine the sacred Roe v. Wade.

Obama was wrong. The obvious proof is that the passage of such legislation, at the state and national level, has not undermined Roe v. Wade. The most fanatical pro-choicers in the U.S. Senate, from Barbara Boxer to Hillary Clinton, understood this and thus voted in favor of BAIPA. Obama, however, failed to make the crucial distinction.

That does not mean that Obama is a monster who enjoys killing babies, and suggesting so would indeed be “offensive.” At the very least, however, this calls into question his judgment, his experience, and his decision-making abilities—crucial characteristics for a man who wants to be president of the United States.

It is also revealing of his stridency on the abortion issue and blind loyalty to the abortion movement. Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton on abortion.

Of all the policy areas where Obama could have failed his fellow citizens, this one was pretty darned serious.


Paul Kengor is professor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Jarrett Skorup is a student fellow at the Center for Vision & Values.