pudge's Journal: Barack Obama Voted for Legal Infanticide

No, I am not talking about abortion, though that is what Obama wants you to think. I am talking about a vote that came up in the Illinois State Legislature that forbade the practice of letting born children die.

FactCheck.org has some of the facts, as does National Review Online.

At issue is a practice of children being born alive, with vital signs separate from the mother, and being left to die. Literally. They would not be provided any care, but just left alone until they were dead. Human babies born alive, and intentionally ignored so that they would die.

Infanticide.

Nurse Jill Stanek tells of how she cradled one Down syndrome child -- who was being taken to be left all alone in a soiled utility room -- for 45 minutes until the child simply stopped living.

Obama said he opposed the legislation banning this practice because it didn't, in his opinion, protect abortion rights: he thought it could be used as a back-door to banning abortions. When a provision -- the "neutrality clause" -- was added to the federal legislation banning the practice, which explicitly protected all abortion rights, it passed the U.S. Senate unanimously, and was not even opposed by NARAL.

Obama said he would support the federal statute because it contained the neutrality clause. And when it came time to add the clause to their state bill, he voted for it. But then he voted to kill the bill anyway. (Incidentally, Obama argued for years that he only opposed it because it lacked the neutrality clause, and only last month admitted that was false.)

There's really no way around it: Obama voted for legal infanticide. Not that he voted for infanticide, but he did vote to keep it legal. When his sole objection -- protecting abortion rights -- was eliminated, he still voted against the bill banning the practice. Why?

NRO's Andrew C. McCarthy has our answer. Digging into the debate on the subject, he finds Obama arguing that live children are not being left to die (he says he trusts an abortion doctor to not let a born child, who was intended to be aborted, die!), and asserting that the bill is designed not to protect those lives, but to burden women who are trying to have an abortion with legal threats to their doctors.

As McCarthy said: 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.

Don't let Obama and his supporters get away with saying this is something other than it is. It's living human children being left to die in soiled rooms simply because they are unwanted. They are not fetuses, they are not pre-humans, they are live, born, human infants. And Obama voted to allow them to be killed.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

What is...

[Bill Dog]

...the importance of your distinction between "abortion" and "infanticide"?

Re:

[pudge]

Abortion happens while still in the womb. Many people disagree on whether this is an acceptable act.

Infanticide -- in this case, anyway -- happens outside of the womb. A newborn infant, sometimes a healthy and viable one, is killed after being born. Very few people agree with Obama that this is a practice worth protecting.

Re:

[Bill Dog]

So how do you feel about your playing into peoples' artificial differentiation between the two?

Both are killing infants, the only difference is geography. I don't get to kill someone if they're, for example, behind a curtain, when I don't get to kill them elsewhere. It's stupid, and you play along, for what? To convince people he's a monster? He's already a monster -- he's (solidly) pro-abortion. I really hate the political games/ploys, and hate it even more when my own side engages in them. "Abortion" and

Re:

[pudge]

So how do you feel about your playing into peoples' artificial differentiation between the two?

I am glad that Obama has made the choice more clear to more people.

I cannot change peoples' minds. I am not clever enough. I can present a case, however, and even if they find abortion to be acceptable, many of them won't find this to be acceptable.

If they oppose me on abortion but join me on this issue, then I am glad to have them on this issue. I am not taking advantage of anyone's ignorance, I am presenting the facts. I defy you to show me a single example of me trying to take advantage of ignorance.

Re:

[Bill Dog]

And Bill Clinton didn't have sex with that woman. You make a good party machine operative. My respect for you took a huge dive today.

Re:

[pudge]

And Bill Clinton didn't have sex with that woman.

Nice non sequitur.

You make a good party machine operative. My respect for you took a huge dive today.

Yawn. So by that I take it you CANNOT show me a single example of me trying to take advantage of ignorance. Because if you could back up your accusation, surely you would have done so upon request.

Re:

[multimed]

Well one makes me profoundly said for humanity. The other makes me want to puke. The former, is something that reasonable people can disagree over. The latter is not.

Re:

[pudge]

The former, is something that reasonable people can disagree over. The latter is not.

I used to think that neither would have been a subject of "reasonable" disagreement.

Re:

[multimed]

Well it hurt me to actually phrase it that way. To some extent, I know what Bill's getting at - there is an aspect of temporarily minimizing something awful to show people something truly horrifically awful. In a way, it does feels like compromising a core value. To that I have to say two things: sometimes you have to pick your battles and I haven't seen anywhere where pudge (or myself) have condoned abortion - only admitted that it is different if only because there are a lot of people who are OK with it w

Re:

[Bill Dog]

Spoken like a true product of today's society. Arbitrary but accurate.

Re:

[pudge]

So what about passive and aggressive?