In what could easily be looked upon as the quickest about face on an issue this election cycle, Barack Obama’s campaign has admitted the presumptive Democratic nominee misrepresented the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, only 24 hours after Obama himself accused his critics of lying. In an interview Saturday night with CBN’s David Brody, Barack Obama said it defied commons sense to believe he was somehow in favor of withholding life saving support from an infant born alive.

Well and 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.

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. By the way, we also had a bill, a law already in place in IL that insured life saving treatment was given to infants.

So for people to suggest that I and the IL Medical Society, so IL doctors were somehow in favor of withholding life saving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous. It defies common sense 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.

It’s one thing for people to disagree with me about the issue of choice, it’s another thing for people to out and out misrepresent my positions repeatedly, even after they know that they’re wrong. And that’s what’s been happening.

Barack Obama took to the defensive on the issue, accusing his critics of lying about his stance on the issue, declaring that it was ridiculous to believe he would have voted against a bill that would mandate medical treatment for infants who survive abortions. He claims the bill which was presented at the State level differed from that at the federal level because it did not contain a neutrality clause, and would somehow undermine Roe v. Wade. David Freddoso looks at the bill in question and here is what it says:

In 2001, Senator Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois senate to speak against a bill that would have recognized premature abortion survivors as “persons.” The bill was in response to a Chicago-area hospital that was leaving such babies to die. Obama voted “present” on the bill after denouncing it. It passed the state Senate but died in a state house committee.

In 2003, a similar bill came before Obama’s health committee. He voted against it. But this time, the legislation was slightly different. This latter version was identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which by then had already passed the U.S. Senate unanimously (with a hearty endorsement even from abortion advocate Sen. Barbara Boxer) and had been signed into law by President Bush.

Sen. Obama is currently misleading people about what he voted against, specifically claiming that the bill he voted against in his committee lacked “neutrality” language on Roe v. Wade. The bill did contain this language. He even participated in the unanimous vote to put it in.

Obama’s work against the bill to protect premature babies represents one of two times in his political career, along with his speech against the Iraq war, that he really stuck out his neck for something that might hurt him politically. Unlike his Iraq speech, Obama is deeply embarrassed about this one — so embarrassed that he is offering a demonstrable falsehood in explanation for his actions. Fortunately, the documents showing the truth are now available.

At the end of last week, Obama gave an interview to CBN’s David Brody in which he repeated the false claim that the born-alive bills he worked, spoke, and voted against on this topic between 2001 and 2003 would have negatively affected Roe v. Wade. This has always been untrue, but, until last week, it appeared to be a debatable point that depended on one’s interpretation of the bill language. Every single version of the bill was neutral on Roe. Each one affected only babies already born, not ones in the womb.

But in 2003, in the health committee which he chaired, Obama voted against a version of the bill that contained the specific “neutrality” language — redundant language affirming that the bill only applied to infants already born and granted no rights to the unborn. You can visit the Illinois legislature’s website here to see the language of the “Senate Amendment 1,” which was added in a unanimous 10-0 vote in the committee before Obama helped kill it. This is the so-called “neutrality clause” on Roe that everyone is talking about:

1 AMENDMENT TO SENATE BILL 1082

2 AMENDMENT NO. . Amend Senate Bill 1082 on page 1, by

3 replacing lines 24 through 26 with the following:

4 “(c) Nothing in this Section shall be construed to

5 affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal

6 right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at

7 any point prior to being born alive as defined in this

8 Section.”.

The addition of this amendment made the bill identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.

This morning, the NY Sun reports that Obama’s campaign has admitted the Senator misrepresented the bill he had voted against in the State Senate:

During the Democratic primary, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign criticized Mr. Obama for voting “present” — instead of “no” — on the “Born Alive” bill in Illinois, which did not contain a provision protecting the Roe v. Wade decision.

The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a “Born Alive” bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.

The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.

Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported “was not the bill that was presented at the state level.”

His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law. Those concerns did not exist for the federal bill, because there is no federal abortion law.

So as it turns out, critics of Obama’s vote on the Born Alive act were not misrepresenting the bill as Obama has repeatedly said they were, it was Obama himself who misrepresented it. The bill Obama had imposed clearly stated that it did not affect the legal status of a fetus prior to it being born alive, yet the Senator was concerned this bill would somehow undermine Roe v. Wade.

Senator Obama has been working very diligently to present himself as a moderate candidate who would be able to work across party lines in order to move American in a new direction. His past voting record however implies that he would be unable to work with even the moderates of his own party in passing legislation, as his opposition to this bill which received unanimous support in the United States Senate indicates.

Sphere: Related Content

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Abortion, Barack Obama, Election 2008, Features, Politics