WHY BARACK OBAMA VOTED FOR INFANTICIDE

By now many people have learned that Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion public official in the nation. He even supports the relegalization of partial-birth abortion, which Congress banned, which ban the Supreme Court upheld (criticized by Obama) and which 75% of the American public oppose. Indeed, at a gathering of Planned Parenthood in 2007 he said he wanted his first act as president to be signing a bill to remove all restrictions on all abortions, including partial-birth abortions.

Fewer are aware of Obama's support of infanticide while he was a senator in Illinois and then lied about what he had done and why he did it. But his lies were disclosed when transcripts of proceedings in the Illinois Senate became available.

The legal affairs editor of National Review Andrew McCarthy examined the circumstances when Illinois State Senator Barack Obama singlehandedly blocked the Illinois Born Alive Act from being adopted. The identical federal version had already been approved by unanimous vote in both Houses of Congress and signed into law by the President. The need for such a bill arose when it was disclosed that babies who survived abortions were tossed aside and left to die. McCarthy reports:

My friend Hadley Arkes ingeniously argued that legislatures, including Congress, should take up “Born Alive” legislation: laws making explicit what decency already made undeniable: that from the moment of birth — from the moment one is expelled or extracted alive from the birth canal — a human being is entitled to all the protections the law accords to living persons.

Such laws were enacted by overwhelming margins. In the United States Congress, even such pro-abortion activists as Sen. Barbara Boxer went along.

But not Barack Obama. In the Illinois senate, he opposed Born-Alive tooth and nail.

The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn’t oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion that he opposed it because it didn’t contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion that it was unnecessary because Illinois law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn’t — and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?)....

As an Illinois state senator, he voted to permit infanticide. And now, running for president, he banks on media adulation to insulate him from his past.

The record, however, doesn’t lie.

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s the only word that fits....

When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued that protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death. (emphasis added)

On the floor of the Senate arguing to defeat the bill Obama lied about the condition of infants who survive abortions. Obama said this:

I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these are children who are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after.

McCarthy's incredulous reaction to this bald-faced lie:

This is staggering. As Obama spoke these words, he well knew that children were being born alive but precisely not looked after by the abortion doctors whose water the senator was carrying. As Stanek [the nurse who testified in committee in the Illinois Senate before Obama] put it, as many as one in five — twenty percent — were left to die. That was what prompted the legislation in the first place....

Obama wasn’t worried about “the least of my brothers,” the child. He agitated, instead, over “what liabilities the doctor might have in this situation.” And what kind of doctor? A charlatan who would somehow “continue to think that it’s nonviable” notwithstanding that “there’s, let’s say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.”

Given the choice between the charlatan and “that fetus, or child — however you want to describe it [quoting Obama],” Barack Obama went with the charlatan.

Read it all.

And see our prior report on Obama's problem with Catholic voters. Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessors have made it crystal clear that abortion (and certainly infanticide) stands on a moral plane of its own. It is not one of a number of things as to which reasonable Catholics might differ, such as on just war, global warming and the death penalty. The Democrat candidate for president is a pro-abortion extremist and has promised pro-abortion action if elected. His running mate is pro-abortion. As is well known, the Republican candidates for president and vice president are solidly pro-life. Since the Democrats became the abortion party, many Catholics have left it in despair. Acting with an informed conscience, more will almost certainly do so this year as well.