Barack Obama: The Disturbing Truth
2008 Presidential Campaign, Abortion, Ben Carnes, Christianity, Democrats
I have no interest in being the voice of bipartisanship on this matter. I keep reading that it does not matter for whom you vote, as long as you get out and vote like a good citizen should, and I cannot possibly roll my eyes any harder than I do each time such an asinine attempt at pandering to one’s opponents is spewed. Cory briefly alluded to the below issue a few days ago, but it deserves a bit more attention.
Barack Obama speaks of hope, change, optimism, and so forth. Indeed, his sugary rhetoric is apparently so uplifting that many Republicans and, more specifically, Christian conservatives are crossing the aisle to support the candidate who is being presented as falling somewhere between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus. As I see the droves packing out coliseums for Obama rallies, I can only assume that those who are flocking to Obama’s campaign are either heartless or ignorant; I see no other alternatives.
In 2002, as a member of the Illinois state senate, Barack Obama opposed the Induced Infant Liability Act. Here is how the actual legislation read:
Section 5. Findings and intent. The General Assembly finds that all children who are born alive are entitled to equal protection under the law regardless of the circumstances surrounding the birth. Children who are born alive as the result of an induced labor abortion or any other abortion are in special need of protection due to the fact that the intent of their birth is to cause the death of the born child. Therefore, it is the intent of the General Assembly to protect a child who is born alive as the result of an induced labor abortion or any other abortion and to ensure that the child receives all medical care necessary to preserve and protect the life, health, and safety of the child.
Section 10. Induced labor abortion; actions. If a child is born alive after an induced labor abortion or any other abortion, a parent of the child or the public guardian of the county in which the child was born may maintain an action on the child’s behalf for damages, including all costs of care to preserve and protect the life, health, and safety of the child, punitive damages, costs of suit, and attorney’s fees, against any hospital, health care facility, or health care provider who harms or neglects the child or fails to provide medical care to the child after the child’s birth. Any damages recovered shall be used to pay for the cost of preserving and protecting the life, health, and safety of the child. If the child does not survive, the balance remaining after the costs of preserving and protecting the life, health, and safety of the child are paid shall be deposited into the Neonatal Care and Perinatal Hospice Fund.
In summary, under the bill, should a baby survive an attempted abortion, he/she would be legally protected. Rather than being left to die and, ultimately, discarded, the babies would be given medical attention in an attempt to save their lives. Obama opposed this bill.
Barack Obama is wrong on many issues, but even if such were not the case, I only need to know one thing: the man who is supposed to unite America and infuse the nation with newfound hope, who is charged with giving a voice to the needy and helpless, found it acceptable that, due to his actions, innocent babies (the most helpless of all) who survived abortions would be left to struggle and slowly die before being thrown away. Truly, there are no words to describe how gut-wrenchingly appalling such a stance is.
I will no doubt be accused of being a single-issue voter in this regard and I will wear all such accusations as badges of honor, for to be able to brush off this vote as “just another issue” on which one might happen to disagree with Obama indicates either a fundamental misunderstanding of the circumstances surrounding the legislation or a complete lack of compassion.
Amanda Carpenter of HumanEvents.com further explains Obama’s approach to the bill:
“Jill Stanek, a registered delivery-ward nurse who was the prime mover behind the legislation after she witnessed aborted babies’ being born alive and left to die, testified twice before Obama in support of the Induced Infant Liability Act bills. She also testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Stanek told me her testimony ‘did not faze’ Obama.
In the second hearing, Stanek said, ‘I brought pictures in and presented them to the committee of very premature babies from my neonatal resuscitation book from the American Pediatric Association, trying to show them unwanted babies were being cast aside. Babies the same age were being treated if they were wanted!’
‘And those pictures didn’t faze him [Obama] at all,’ she said.
At the end of the hearing, according to the official records of the Illinois State senate, Obama thanked Stanek for being ‘very clear and forthright,’ but said his concern was that Stanek had suggested ‘doctors really don’t care about children who are being born with a reasonable prospect of life because they are so locked into their pro-abortion views that they would watch an infant that is viable die.’ He told her, ‘That may be your assessment, and I don’t see any evidence of that. What we are doing here is to create one more burden on a woman and I can’t support that.’”
Ultimately the question is simply this: in voters’ eyes, is there anything a Presidential candidate can do that should inherently disqualify him from being permitted to assume the role of President of the United States? If Obama’s actions on this matter are not enough to render him an utterly repugnant candidate, then surely no stance on any issue will ever be enough to truly distress the voting populace. Indeed, if, with full knowledge of his past, Obama is still determined to be palatable enough to elect as the leader of the most powerful and influential nation on Earth, then surely John Taylor Bowles is reinvigorated regarding his viability as a candidate, as apathy regarding this vote surely indicates that Americans are at a point when absolutely any stance is potentially acceptable, contingent on one’s ability to use pretty words.
In the end, while my version may not have the same charming ring, how you vote could not possibly matter more. And perhaps never before has it been so desirable for so many people to be poor citizens by simply staying home.
Note: For what it’s worth, even NARAL was okay with the legislation being enacted, writing:
“Consistent with our position last year, NARAL does not oppose passage of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act … floor debate served to clarify the bill’s intent and assure us that it is not targeted at Roe v. Wade or a woman’s right to choose.”
Sources:
Full Text of Legislation
HumanEvents.com story
Technorati Tags: Barack, Obama, Barack Obama, 2008 Presidential Campaign, Abortion, Pro-Life, Conservative, Conservatism, Republican, Republicans, Politics, Political, News, Current Events
Ben Carnes @ February 21, 2008
[…] Obama: The Disturbing Truth February 21st, 2008 Team Member wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBarack Obama speaks of hope, change, […]
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
[…] Ben Carnes wrote an interesting post today on Barack Obama: The Disturbing TruthHere’s a quick excerptBarack Obama speaks of hope, change, optimism, and so forth. Indeed, his sugary rhetoric is apparently so uplifting that many Republicans and, more specifically, Christian conservatives are crossing the aisle to support the candidate … […]
Truth be told, I have “sanctity of life” issues with every candidate. And while this vote is bothersome, I also have problems with the wording in the legislation.
My biggest problem? Unless my reading comprehension skills are lacking (which is certainly a possibility), the language of the legislation gives no answer as to what happens to the child whose life is to be preserved. Is the mother who wished to abort the child suddenly the primary caregiver? Is the state? Is the child put up for adoption? Is she condemned to bounce around foster homes until she is no longer a minor?
Did I just miss the answer?
I’m not trying to divert the topic away from Obama, but I am trying to say that there may be legitimate problems with the most well-intentioned legislation.
That, or I’m making proverbial mountains out of proverbial mole hills in hopes to justify my February primary vote for Obama.
The answer is not spelled out in the bill, but I believe it is implicitly covered. The bill allowed one of the parents to take control of the child or, if that didn’t take place, the most important function of the bill kicked in.
In Section 15, specific funding is created so that, should the parent not take responsibility for the child, the public guardian of the county has a right, via Section 10, to step in on the baby’s behalf and pay for its health care with the aforementioned government funding. At this point, it seems clear that it would be turned over to Social Services, as the government has already had to step in on the child’s behalf, due to the parent(s) turning down the option of taking care of the child. I assume, at that point, standard Social Services protocol kicks in.
[…] Three Conservatives Author: Ben Carnes Date: February 21, […]
Thanks for your answer.
I’m still mulling this one over.
I usually give Democrats a pass on abortion because I tend to agree with most of their other stances. I usually don’t give Republicans credit on abortion because I disagree with most of their other stances. Abortion, at least in its current discussion (not this post, but in general), is not my most important issue, because I think it’s far more complicated than most are willing to deal with. But let’s just say I’m not too big of a fan of a “no” vote for this legislation… so thanks for pointing it out.
[…] Campaign, Abortion, Ben Carnes, Democrats The following article by Jill Stanek expounds upon this article, regarding Obama’s vote on the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” during his […]
[…] Barack Obama: The Disturbing Truth […]
Some have commented here that the bill does not explicitly state anything about custody of a baby who is protected after birth that was a failed abortion attempt. Why should this bill address custody? Custody of unwanted children is a whole different topic than whether or not to kill a human being, and though one bill affects others, they are still separate bills - and have separate arguments and conditions.
The implication behind this comment is that killing an infant is the answer to solving custody issues.
Similarly, a post from a bbs on this same topic states, “there are, however, millions of children who die in our country due to poverty, malnutrition and lack of medical care. how about the good prolifeacton crew take up that cause???” Again, separate issues. Same implied argument by this ignorant poster. Is the answer to preventing children dying of poverty, malnutrition and lack of medical care grounds for killing them as infants?
One of the huge problems with abortion discussions is that someone in the past successfully associated the abortion topic on “women’s rights.” A fallacy if I ever saw one, as the whole argument is about what to do with the body of a living baby, not the body of a woman. The root of the debate is on the question of when the law begins to protect the right to live for a human being. Currently the law begins when the head of the baby has cleared the womb of its mother, and that is why ghastly procedures such as “partial birth abortions” was made possible until Bush thankfully outlawed it, because it gave a doctor the right to turn the baby around in the womb, bring its body out, and while its head was still in the womb, puncture its skull and draw out its brain, deflating its head, before pulling it all the way out. For anyone to support such an awful procedure is shocking.
I support the rights of parents to kill an unwanted embryo in its first Trimester. Parents have plenty of time to make that decision while the baby is still an embryo. (Take careful note that I say “parents” not mother alone. Why isn’t the father, who contributed half the genes, considered in this argument?) I am against the right of anyone to kill an unwanted fetus in the third Trimester unless there is a strong medical cause (though “medical cause” could be quite a list of possible conditions that would have to be agreed upon by the legal and medical communities… proven severe birth defects, a life-threat to the mother, and so forth). The point is that it makes no legal or humane sense to state that a mother alone has such power over the life or death of a normal, healthy infant just because it’s a few weeks from being born and she suddenly changes her mind. All based on the lie that she is making a decision with HER body when in fact it’s the baby’s body being killed? Woe v Wade was a fallacy from the very beginning.