Obama Cover-up on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 1:23 am

Obama Cover-up on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Continues
to Unravel After Sen. Obama Says NRLC is "Lying"

By Douglas Johnson
NRLC Legislative Director

WASHINGTON (August 18, 2008, Noon) -- Senator Barack Obama's four-year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions continues to unravel.

In the most recent developments, Senator Obama himself, in a videorecorded interview Saturday night with David Brody of CBN News (subsequently broadcast on both CBN and CNN), said three times that National Right to Life was "lying" in asserting that he had voted against a state bill virtually identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. He did not directly address newly uncovered documents that had been released by NRLC on August 11 -- documents that proved that he had done exactly that, contradicting four years of the Obama cover story.

In response, on Sunday, August 17th, we issued a challenge to Obama to either declare the newly discovered documents to be forgeries and call for an investigation of the forgery, or admit that he had misrepresented his record on the live-born infants legislation (not just once, but for four years), and apologize to those he's called liars.

We don't have an apology yet. But now there is this, in a news story posted on the New York Sun website lon the evening of August 17th: "Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday . . . [Obama's] campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate . . ."

http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-fac ... ion/84059/

Here is a summary of what came before:

In Congress, from 2000-2002, while Barack Obama was still a state senator in Illinois, we here in Washington, D.C., were dealing with the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), a project in which I was deeply involved. The original bill was a simple two-paragraph proposal -- it established in black-letter law that for all federal law purposes, any baby who was entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who showed any of the specified signs of life, was to be regarded as a legal person for however long he or she lived, and that this applied whether or not the birth was the result of an abortion or of spontaneous premature labor. NARAL immediately attacked the bill as an assault on Roe v. Wade: "The Act would effectively grant legal personhood to a pre-viable fetus -- in direct conflict with Roe. . . . In proposing this bill, anti-choice lawmakers are seeking to ascribe rights to fetuses 'at any stage of development,' thereby directly contradicting one of Roe's basic tenets."

See http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/Born_Alive_ ... e-born.pdf

Nevertheless, the vast majority of "pro-choice" House members -- including hard-core pro-abortion leaders such as Jerrold Nadler -- were unwilling to extend the principles of Roe to living babies entirely separate from their mothers. They rejected the NARAL claim and voted for the bill; it passed the House 380-15. (Nothing like that had ever happened to NARAL before.) But the bill was killed in the Senate by an objection to unanimous consent.

In 2001, in Illinois, a bill was introduced in the state Senate that was closely patterned on the federal BAIPA, to govern constructions of state law. It contained an additional sentence, which read, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." (We'll call this the "immediate protection clause." It really just repeated the substantive effect of the other paragraphs.)

Obama voted against this bill in committee. On the floor he gave a speech attacking it and a couple of other related bills (the only such speech by any senator). Although the speech was technically made during consideration of another bill, SB 1093, Obama said that his reasons applied to SB 1095 (the BAIPA) as well. He then voted "present." Voting "present" was a tactic recommended by the local Planned Parenthood lobbyist; under an Illinois constitutional provision a bill is deemed passed only if it receives an absolute majority of the sworn members of the House or Senate, so the operative effect of a "present" vote is the same as a "no" vote.

The core of Obama's speech was the same as the 2000 NARAL attack at the federal level -- the bill violated Roe v. Wade because it applied to "a pre-viable fetus." Here is what he said:

“Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -– a child, a nine-month-old –- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it –- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.”

It did not seem to matter to Obama in 2001 (or to NARAL, in 2000) that the "fetuses" (sic) in question were entirely born and alive. Because, you see, they were "pre-viable," and these were abortions.

The 2001 bill passed the Illinois Senate despite Obama's objections, but died in a House committee.

In Illinois, pretty much the same events repeated in 2002, although this time Obama voted "no" on the floor. Meanwhile, in Washington, an additional clause was added to the federal bill, which we call "the neutrality clause." (The "neutrality" clause read, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being ‘born alive’ as defined in this section.”) We saw this clause as no substantive change -- it merely made explicit the original scope of the bill. Nevertheless, with the change, the bill passed without a dissenting vote in either house of Congress, and was signed into law in 2002. (To view the final federal BAIPA as enacted, click here. To view a chronology of events pertaining to the federal BAIPA, click here.)

But in Illinois, Obama kept fighting, now from a chairman's chair. In 2003, the state bill was reintroduced in its original form, but the chief sponsor also introduced "Senate Amendment No. 1," an amendment to remove the "immediate protection clause" and insert the exact language of the new "neutrality clause" from the federal bill. Adoption of "Senate Amendment No. 1" would transform the state bill into a virtual clone of the now-enacted final federal bill/law. Both the bill and the amendment were referred to a committee of which Obama had just become chairman (the Democrats had taken majority control of the Illinois Senate in January, 2003).

On March 12-13, 2003, Obama chaired a meeting of the committee at which Senate Amendment No. 1 was adopted (with his support, 10-0). This transformed the state bill into a virtual clone of the federal bill; see them side-by-side here. Obama then led all of the committee's Democrats in voting to kill the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4. (We didn't know about this meeting until about two weeks ago.)

The very next year, the cover up began.

When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent criticized him for supporting "infanticide." Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state BAIPA because it lacked the pre-birth neutrality clause that had been added to the federal bill. As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, "Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. . . . The difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion."

Obama's explanation was false, but the local newspapers did not uncover the March 13, 2003 records, and they accepted the explanation uncritically. The Obama campaign has been quoting the resulting stories ever since.

During Obama's 2008 run for President, his campaign and his defenders have asserted repeatedly and forcefully that it is a distortion, or even a smear and a lie, to suggest that Obama opposed a state born-alive bill that was the same as the federal bill. See, for example, this June 30, 2008 "factcheck" issued by the Obama campaign, in the form that it still appeared on the Obama website on August 7, 2008. The Obama "cover story" has often been repeated as fact, or at least without challenge, in major organs of the news media. (Two recent examples: CNN reported on June 30, 2008, "Senator Obama says if he had been in the U.S. Senate in 2002, he, too, would have voted in favor of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act because unlike the Illinois bill, it included language protecting Roe v. Wade." The New York Times reported in a story on August 7, 2008 that Obama "said he had opposed the bill because it was poorly drafted and would have threatened the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established abortion as a constitutional right. He said he would have voted for a similar bill that passed the United States Senate because it did not have the same constitutional flaw as the Illinois bill.")

On August 11, 2008, we (the National Right to Life Committee) released recently uncovered legislative documents demonstrating that Obama had, in fact, presided over the meeting at which the bill was transformed into a clone of the federal bill, and then voted down. Although these documents contradicted numerous emphatic statements by Obama and his campaign, only some of which are referenced above, so far they have been virtually ignored by mainstream news media.

On or about August 14, the Obama campaign submitted to Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune a "defense," which on August 14 was posted on Zorn's blog, which mostly repeated the old Obama line and which did not specifically reference the documents released by NRLC, but which did contain a new element: a purported side-by-side comparison of the state and federal BAIPAs. The comparison asserted that the "immediate protection clause" was still part of the bill that Obama voted against (it was not -- but why would that clause bother him?), and asserted that the "neutrality clause" was merely a "failed amendment, not included in final legislation" (false - it was adopted 10-0). The posting also contained many diversionary provisions -- references to an entirely different bill, misleading characterizations of an old, loophole-ridden Illinois law, etc..

On August 16, in a short interview with CBN News's David Brody, Obama was asked about the growing controversy surrounding the National Right to Life release. In his response, Obama asserted three times that we were "lying." See it here: http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/429328.aspx

Late on August 17, the New York Sun posted a story by staff political reporter Russell Berman, which said in part: "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 . . ."

The campaign then tried to shift to a new objection to the "identical bill" -- that it "could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law." Given the language of the final state bill, this claim is absurd, unless Obama believed that "existing Illinois abortion law" allowed for "abortions" to be carried to a lethal conclusion even after a live birth. The newest line is also not consistent with Obama's oft-stated excuse for opposing the state legislation, and fails to explain his four years of misrepresentation.

Nor does the Sun story indicate that the Obama campaign has issued any apology to NRLC, Bill Bennett, or the others who Senator Obama and his campaign have been calling liars for saying what they now admit was the truth.

How to make sense of all this? All of Obama's misrepresentations and contradictions on this issue have one common goal: to obscure the position he actually articulated and acted on in 2001 through 2003. Obama explained in 2001 that he opposed the state bill to protect born-alive infants because it would apply before the point of long-term survivability -- so-called 'viability.' This is the same objection that NARAL originally voiced to the federal bill, in 2000. But that was exactly the point of the bill -- to make it clear that a live-born baby was a legally protected person for as long as he or she lived, whether for a day, an hour, or a minute.

Neither the original version of the legislation, nor the final state version that Obama killed in 2003, contained any language to protect babies before the point of live birth. On the 2001 and 2002 state bills, Obama took to a position that already had been rejected by the U.S. House 380-15 (in 2000). In 2003, Obama took a position on the abortion-survivor legislation that was more extreme than any member of Congress of either party.

The Obama campaign and its apologists are now asserting that the state Born-Alive Infants Protection bill was part of a "package" of bills. This is an obvious attempt to change the subject and avoid prolonged scrutiny of Obama's record on the sole bill that has been the focus of the national debate, that being the bill that was copied from the federal bill. In 2001-2003, there were various bills in the Illinois Senate that dealt with the procedures to be followed during very late abortions, but those bills each had separate numbers, were each subject to separate amending processes, and were (of course) each voted on separately. The 2003 Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill (SB 1082) could have been passed regardless of what happened to the various abortion bills -- and SB 1082 would have passed the Illinois Senate in 2003, if Chairman Obama had not killed it in his committee.

The Obama of 2001-2003 really did object to a bill merely because it defended the proposition, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." And it is that reality that he now desperately wants to conceal from the eyes of the public.

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
202-626-8820
Legfederal@aol.com
http://www.nrlc.org

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:29 am

Hands up all who say Tzor is a fucking insane right wing loon for swallowing and propagating this drivel.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:24 am

:Hands:

Holy shit yo. This dude be way off the deep end. The NRLC funnels money to terrorists, reprinting their tirades wholesale is something that you would only do if you were a batshit off-the-deep-end-conservative crank job.

They are not a news source, they are not an objective or even coherent source. They support people who put bombs in dumpsters that kill police officers. If you go to the NRLC for anything except an emergency shortage of toilet paper it's because you're a stark raving lunatic who drank way too much of the conservative Koolaid a long time back.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:38 am

*raises hand*

I find myself unable to believe this, even though politicians lie all the time. The fact that it happens to come from NRLC, and is spouted by Tzor, merely adds to my disbelief.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:15 am

Where's the evidence of any of this, aside from some crazy fucks making shit up?

There have been no fetuses 'saved' from abortion. The born-alive legislation literally required hospitals and emergency workers to attend to lumps of flesh as though they were real people. You need more than a heartbeat, 'voluntary' muscle movement, or placenta 'pulsing' to be alive.

Chickens run around with their heads clean off. That doesn't mean they're fucking alive. Nor are eggs chickens. either.

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:15 am

Just because something comes from a disreputable source doesn't mean it's false. I could care less how Obama voted (It pretty much comes down to 'do we keep the fetus on life support until it dies'), but if he lied about it I'd like to know.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:39 am

Law enforcement investigated these claims in 1999 and could not find any evidence or witnesses to corroborate the allegations.

In other words, it's a bunch of bunkem.

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 3:53 pm

Crissa wrote:Law enforcement investigated these claims in 1999 and could not find any evidence or witnesses to corroborate the allegations.

In other words, it's a bunch of bunkem.

-Crissa

Media Matters for America isn't exactly an unbiased source, but it's good to see the other side.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:17 pm

Typical reaction of the left wing ...
"I demand evidence."
"I'm not listening."
"They are some wacko terrorist organization."
"You must be an insane right winged loon."

Try googling "abortion survivors" and you might learn something.
Testimony of abortion survivor Gianna Jessen before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on April 22, 1996. (Abortion Facts dot com)
The Abortion Survivors (Priests for Life)

(I expect the response to the second link will be the claim that all priests are pedophiles, just as the NRLC are terrorists.)

I don't mind being a "right winged loon" because it sure beats being from the Looney Left.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:43 pm

tzor wrote:(I expect the response to the second link will be the claim that all priests are pedophiles, just as the NRLC are terrorists.)

I don't mind being a "right winged loon" because it sure beats being from the Looney Left.

At least there aren't any pro-abortion terrorists. The pro-abortion aren't willing to murder the anti-choice.

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 6:08 pm

tzor wrote:Typical reaction of the left wing ...
"I demand evidence."

Hahahahaha...

...hahahahaha...

So the typical reaction of the left wing is to base opinion on evidence? And that is a count against them?

Are you then implying that not basing opinion on evidence is a virtue, and is a trait of the right wing?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:02 pm

Yes because you see under Roe v Wade, abortion is such a holy and sacred procedure that even the normal laws about reporting for operations simply doesn't apply. I don't know if you noticed this on the debate on partial birth abortions but the amount of times they invoked the "privacy" excuse on why no actual information is available is about equal to the number of times the Bush administration tried to assured us that information on the wiretapping programs had to be kept "secret" because of national security.

So let's consider this question of proof. What the fuck do you want, cops to bust in on a Planned Parenthood abortion mill and photograph the evidence? Because there is no way in hell that they would volunteer this information on their own and there is no way in hell that any government would be able to get them to give adequate information.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:21 pm

Where's the evidence? There isn't any.

Where's the bias at Media Matters? Is there any? Is there any evidence of that?

These witnesses claimed that illegal things were happening, and the right-wing excuse is that the law enforcement officials found the illegal things, but then declared them not illegal.

I know the RIGHT WING administration does do things like that, but the rest of us don't.

Looney left, indeed. Who's posting pictures, insulting people, and lying on TV? Oh, right, the people that tzor was quoting, apparently.

-Crissa

...When you make shit up like 'Planned Parenthood abortion mill' how is that supposed to make people want to listen to you? If third trimester abortions were taking place, you could totally get the police, a warrant, and bust up the joint to get sealed records.

But it's not true. There isn't a grand conspiracy against you. Your side owns the government and you still think you're being stopped by some shadow government.

That's real looney there.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:08 am

Insulting people? Watch a pro-life rally in Washington, it's one of the most civil events that hits the Washington Mall. Then watch a pro-choice and see how they have to fill the crowd with anti-Catholic protestors mocking priests. If you want to be insulted, be pro-life. You will get nothing but insults. (Franciscans call that "true joy.")

One of the things that pisses me off to no end is that we can't have a debate when no one knows a damn fucking number. It's like that crap Obama pulled out about how abortions have not gone down under the 8 years of the Bush administration. I would love to know how he got that figure. It takes at least 8 years to get all the numbers from all the states. It's almost a bitch to get any numbers from after 2000. Getting numbers (reliable) after 2004 is impossible; even the best web sites use estimation for any number after 2004.

But let's take a attempt by a relatively unbiased news source, the New York Times Saturday, August 23, 2008

Third-trimester abortions remain highly unusual, representing just one-tenth of 1 percent of all the abortions in the United States. But because these abortions push the limits of what many people are prepared to accept, they bring into sharp focus questions of who should decide, and how they should decide, whether an abortion is morally permissible.

The Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that states could not restrict abortions in the first trimester but could restrict or prohibit abortions done after a fetus was viable, roughly the 24th week of pregnancy, except when the woman's life or health was endangered.

Read the article, read the part about the cases where the women wanted the late term abortions because they discovered a condition that could (but not always) give defects such as mental retardation. Health of the mother my ass, they wanted this because eugenics in the womb is legal but killing a disabled person after birth is a haul your ass into jail crime.

Here is another article from Pregnant Pause written in 2000:

In their survey, Guttmacher found only 8 abortionists who admitted using this method, for a total of 363 abortions in 1996 and 201 in the first half of 1997. As their surveys do not include all abortionists in the country, they estimate from this that a total of about 14 abortionists comitted about 640 D&X's in 1996.

On the other hand, an abortionist in California has admitted that he did 65 third-trimester abortions per year, and most of these appeared to be D&X's. The inventor of D&X says that he himself has committed 1000 of them. And a reporter for The Record in Hackensack, NJ, found one cinic there that performed 1,500 D&X's in one year. There may be quibbles over the exact definition of what a D&X is, or perhaps abortionists are understating the numbers to avoid bad publicity.

Guttmacher also asked how far into pregnancy abortionists did D&X's. They found that most were between 20 and 24 weeks. Only two abortionists reported using this method before 20 weeks, and four after 24 weeks. The latest was 33 weeks.

Source: Henshaw, Stanley K. "Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States, 1995-1996". Family Planning Perspectives, 30:6, Nov/Dec 1998.

Counts of abortions are based on the Guttmacher Institute's survey of abortionists. Guttmacher is a strongly pro-abortion organization. Their counts are typically about 10% higher than government figures, because they are based on direct reporting by friendly organizations, while the government numbers come indirectly through state health departments, with varying degress of vigor in pursuit of complete numbers.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 4:16 am

I don't understand your point.

Of course you think pro-lifers are polite. The fact that from 1990 to 2000 they were responsible for the most number of bombings, bomb scares, and domestic terrorism events. Strangely, the federal government stopped counting pro-life group related criminal acts in 2001.

...So, you're worried about what, exactly? Less than a tenth of a percent of procedures? Which already were at an all-time low (they've increased since 2003).

Do you want those women's records to be public, so you can know that they had the extractions due to a health problem on their part or the fetus's? Because that's the only medical reason for those procedures.

Or are women not people, and must carry dead and malformed fetuses until they die or are disfigured themselves?

What's the point in your spew?

-Crissa

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:24 am

tzor wrote:Typical reaction of the left wing ...
"I demand evidence."
"I'm not listening."
"They are some wacko terrorist organization."
"You must be an insane right winged loon."

It would be nice if you could actually link these documents that "prove" that Obama voted against a state bill exactly like the federal bill. You know, since the NRLC didn't bother to do so, despite their strenuous pronunciations that the documents exist and the NRLC itself released them.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 8:26 am

Tzor wrote:Insulting people? Watch a pro-life rally in Washington, it's one of the most civil events that hits the Washington Mall. Then watch a pro-choice and see how they have to fill the crowd with anti-Catholic protestors mocking priests. If you want to be insulted, be pro-life. You will get nothing but insults.

You know, a lot of people get insulted by being called "baby killers" as well. The pro-life side is all about insulting people. Those pictures of loody fetal tissue? That's insulting. It's insulting to me as a person and it's insulting to me as a biologist. The only reason you think anything your team does is "polite" is because it's your damn team and you're too blind to see that maybe a series of accusations of infanticide might offend people a little bit.

Also, your guys shoot people and bombed the Atlanta Olympic Games and we don't do that stuff. So if you think even for a moment that you have the moral high ground, you are wrong. We had the moral high ground in the past, we have it now, and we'll have it for as long as the day follows the night.

The original Hippocratic Oath forbid doctors from performing abortions. The modern oaths don't. The medical profession has weighed all the evidence, all the real evidence, and we've determined that the NRLC is wrong, and Panned Parenthood is right. It's that simple. This is not a religious question, it's a medical question. And the medical profession would kindly like you people to stop lying to people.

-Username17

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 9:37 am

Here's something that I found {OK, 400 KB PDF, Senate Transcript}:

Page 84-88 of above linked Senate transcript pdf wrote:ACTING SECRETARY HAWKER:
Senate Bill 1093.
(Secretary reads title of bill)
3rd Reading of the bill.

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
Senator O'Malley.

SENATOR O'MALLEY:
Thank you, Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Senate. Senate Bill 1093, as amended, provides that no abortion procedure which, in the medical judgment of the attending physician, has a reasonable likelihood of resulting in a live born child shall be undertaken unless there is in attendance a physician other than the physician performing or inducing the abortion who shall assess the child's viability and provide medical care for the child. The bill further provides that if there is a medical emergency, a physician inducing or performing an abortion which results in a live born child shall provide for the soonest practical attendance of a physician other than the physician performing or inducing the abortion to immediately assess the child's viability and provide medical care for the child. The bill additionally provides that a live child born as a result of an -- of -- of an abortion procedure shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law. All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the
child. I'd be pleased to answer any questions there may be.

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
Any discussion? Senator Obama.

SENATOR OBAMA:
Thank you, Madam President. Will the sponsor yield for questions?

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
He indicates he will.

SENATOR OBAMA:
This bill was fairly extensively debated in the Judiciary Committee, and so I won't belabor the issue. I do want to just make sure that everybody in the Senate knows what this bill is about, as I understand it. Senator O'Malley, the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the key concerns was -- is that there was a method of abortion, an induced abortion, where the -- the fetus or child, as -- as some might describe it, is still temporarily alive outside the womb. And one of the concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they were still living. Is that correct? Is that an accurate sort of description of one of the key concerns in the bill?

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
Senator O'Malley.

SENATOR O'MALLEY:
Senator Obama, it is certainly a key concern that the -- the way children are treated following their birth under these circumstances has been reported to be, without question, in my opinion, less than humane, and so this bill suggests that appropriate steps be taken to treat that baby as a -- a citizen of the United States and afforded all the rights and protections it deserves under the Constitution of the United States.

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
Senator Obama.

SENATOR OBAMA:
Well, it turned out -- that during the testimony a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman's right to choose an abortion were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns that your -- you raised and that were raised by witnesses in the testimony. And there was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so I just want to suggest, not that I think it'll make too much difference with respect to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a nine-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional. The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we're placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as -- as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we're probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality. Now, as I said before, this probably won't make any difference. I recall the last time we had a debate about abortion, we passed a bill out of here. I suggested to Members of the Judiciary Committee that it was unconstitutional and it would be struck down by the Seventh Circuit. It was. I recognize this is a passionate issue, and so I -- I won't, as I said, belabor the point. I think it's important to recognize though that this is an area where potentially we might have compromised and -- and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a -- a previable fetus or child was treated by a hospital. We decided not to do that. We're going much further than that in this bill. As a consequence, I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do, on this issue. And as a consequence, I'll be voting Present.

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
Further discussion? If not, Senator O'Malley, to close.

SENATOR O'MALLEY:
Thank you, Madam President and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Senate. The one thing the previous speaker did say is that this is a passionate issue. And -- however, I don't think it's challengeable on constitutional grounds in the manner that was described. This is essentially very simple. The Constitution does not say that a child born must be viable in order to live and be accorded the rights of citizenship. It simply says it must be born. And a child who survives birth is a U.S. citizen, and we need to do everything we can here in the State of Illinois and, frankly, in the other forty-nine states and in the halls of Washington, D.C., to make sure that we secure and protect those rights. So if this legislation is designed to clarify, resecure and reaffirm the rights that are entitled to a child born in America, so be it, and it is constitutional. I would appreciate your support.

PRESIDING OFFICER: (SENATOR KARPIEL)
The question is, shall Senate Bill 1093 pass. Those in favor will vote Aye. Opposed, vote Nay. The voting is open. Have all voted who wish? Have all voted who wish? Have all voted who wish? Take the record, Madam Secretary. On this question, there are 34 voting Aye, 6 voting Nay, 12 voting Present. And Senate Bill 1093, having received the required constitutional majority, is declared passed.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:29 am

Crissa wrote:Of course you think pro-lifers are polite. The fact that from 1990 to 2000 they were responsible for the most number of bombings, bomb scares, and domestic terrorism events. Strangely, the federal government stopped counting pro-life group related criminal acts in 2001.

This is a serious WTF here. You are going to need to prove this shit or get the hell away from whatever it is you are currently smoking. In the first place there has been a heck of a lot of domestic terrorism that has taken place from 1990 to 2000, and in the second place it's like associating every act of the KKK with the Republican Party. (Actually worse, I know of no active member of the pro-life movement who would not condemn without a moment's hesitation any act of terrorism against an abortionist. The bigest weapon for most pro-life people is a rosaary.)

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:50 am

FrankTrollman wrote:You know, a lot of people get insulted by being called "baby killers" as well. The pro-life side is all about insulting people. Those pictures of loody fetal tissue? That's insulting. It's insulting to me as a person and it's insulting to me as a biologist. The only reason you think anything your team does is "polite" is because it's your damn team and you're too blind to see that maybe a series of accusations of infanticide might offend people a little bit.

I tend to agree that "baby killers" is a bit insulting. As for the pictures of pre-born human beings, there are those who are sick and tired of the pathetic copout of calling pre-born human beings just a mass of cells. I am fucking 47 years old and I'm still only a mass of fucking cells. (Or as that famous Star Trek episode once called us, "bags of mostly water.")

FrankTrollman wrote:Also, your guys shoot people and bombed the Atlanta Olympic Games and we don't do that stuff. So if you think even for a moment that you have the moral high ground, you are wrong. We had the moral high ground in the past, we have it now, and we'll have it for as long as the day follows the night.

Oh fuck that as well, they aren't my guys and every pro-life person has repeatedly rejected and condemned such wackos on the spot. What's next, are you going to blame every Muslim for Al Qaeda?

FrankTrollman wrote:The original Hippocratic Oath forbid doctors from performing abortions. The modern oaths don't. The medical profession has weighed all the evidence, all the real evidence, and we've determined that the NRLC is wrong, and Panned Parenthood is right. It's that simple. This is not a religious question, it's a medical question. And the medical profession would kindly like you people to stop lying to people.

Once again, that fucking shit and you know it. I don't recall all the doctors in the world being polled or given a vote on the actions of modern medical colleges. Planned parenthood may be able to bribe polticians. They may be able to bribe medical institutions but they cannot fool everyone.

Actually I never mentioned religion. This is a question of fundamental morals. It is a quesiton of fundamental "human" rights. It is a question of liberty and justice for all; born and unborn. That is the question.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:01 am

Planned parenthood may be able to bribe polticians. They may be able to bribe medical institutions but they cannot fool everyone.

Ah planned parenthood, recognised by mainstream non insane fringe society as one of the great corrupting organisations in the world, why the most centrist individual you could find asked to name such organisations in descending order of corrupting powers would surely put together a list like...

Mafia
Yakuza
Planned Parenthood
Triads
Republican Party
Monsanto
etc...

Either that OR YOU ARE CRAZY.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:28 am

Tzor, there needs to be a point where we differentiate between "a living human being" and "not a living, human being". Otherwise, killing one person means you also kill every single person they may or may not ever have had the chance to father or give birth to - every death is its own genocide.

And that's too stupid even for you loonies. So at what stage do we draw the line? How about a stage where they really do seem to just be a lump of cells that are taking nutrients from the host, unable to possibly survive outside the host without a full medical team, and don't seem to be doing much thinking - indeed, don't seem to be aware of their situation.

And considering the kind of world they'd be entering, it's probably preferable that they get the easy way out - and the religious nutjobs should surely agree, except that one group of them decided to invent Limbo for abortions, so as to guilt people out of contraception. And then decided, using the Power of Infallibility, to get rid of Limbo. Which is pretty cool, being able to create and destroy planes just by saying something.

Anyway, I'm all in favour of euthanasia - there's too much suffering, and it can only be a good thing to stop suffering, so if people want out, give them an arse-load of morphine and consider that the world has become a little bit happier. I say that despite knowing that if more people thought this way in Australia, I would be long gone, before ever coming here. Even though things got better eventually, I still don't think it would have been a bad option then.

So why not skip the middleman and not risk a life of suffering for someone who already has a head-start (if the parent wants to abort, then chances are that either the baby is going to enter life with some kind of problem, the mother has a health issue and could leave the baby motherless at birth, or the child is simply unwanted, and life is REALLY going to suck for them)? The parent gets what they either want or need, depending on their situation and why they feel they should abort (I hardly see it as being based on a momentary whim), and one less kid needs to grow up in a screwed up situation, learning to hate life and everyone around them, only to end up eating a bullet or becoming a bitter, drug-addicted misanthrope.

If you really think it's important that less people die, how about looking at executions, shitty road laws allowing any drunk to kill the pedestrian of their choice, and wars? In those cases, the person killed often wants to live and can even convey that desire to you, rather than just floating there, digesting liquid nutrients and potentially developing limbs.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:24 am

Tzor wrote:Once again, that fucking shit and you know it. I don't recall all the doctors in the world being polled or given a vote on the actions of modern medical colleges.

Really? That would be surprising, except that I of course don't "remember" it either, because it happened before I was born! But it did happen, because that's how medical scientific consensus works.

See it used to be that we defined life in terms of heart beats, which made abortion something we couldn't do after just 22 days. It also meant that CPR was unheard of and we couldn't do heart transplants. But with better technology and a lot of investigation we don't define life that way anymore, because it doesn't produce useful results.

This is not part of a grand Planned Parenthood conspiracy. It's a fundamental reassessment as to the definitions of life and death that were undertaken by the entire scientific community in response to the findings of the 20th century investigations. We looked hard at the problems, and your medieval solutions were not the ones that we needed to solve them.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:47 am

Doesn't Biblical law define the start of a baby's life as "quickening", that is when it first starts moving at around 20 weeks?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:43 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Doesn't Biblical law define the start of a baby's life as "quickening", that is when it first starts moving at around 20 weeks?

Traditionally, the quickening is the first moment the mother feels the baby move, which represents the entrance of the soul, because until that moment the body is insufficiently formed (or 'in the image of God' for Christians) to contain a soul. That's what Aristotle thought, and St. Augustine agreed with him.

I don't know about biblical law, but I do know that Catholicism has gone back and forth on the quickening matter. 'Life begins at conception' was most recently decreed by Pope Pius IX in 1869. However, pretty much every legal system from the Code of Hammurabi to American common law has made some form of the quickening distinction.

In terms of what the bible actually says, in Numbers it recommends abortion if a husband suspects his wife of unfaithfulness; and in Exodus it clearly distinguishes between causing a woman to lose her child and committing murder.