Anti-abortion activists accuse Obama of “supporting infanticide,” and the National Right to Life Committee says he’s conducted a “four-year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions.” Obama says they’re “lying.”
At issue is Obama’s opposition to Illinois legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003 that would have defined any aborted fetus that showed signs of life as a “born alive infant” entitled to legal protection, even if doctors believe it could not survive.
Obama opposed the 2001 and 2002 “born alive” bills as backdoor attacks on a woman’s legal right to abortion, but he says he would have been “fully in support” of a similar federal bill that President Bush had signed in 2002, because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade.
FactCheck.org
Analysis:
It seems that in every Presidential election, the issue of abortion is hotly contested, with the unhappy result of polarizing Americans. While it is certainly not appropriate to use the pulpit as a political tool, it is the responsibility of Christians to speak out against sin. Abortion is sinful, and those who are supporting it are supporting the killing of unborn children. According to scripture, the unborn is a child (cf. Psalm 139:13; Luke 1:41).
This point goes to the heart of the current controversy. Pro-life groups claim that the Democrat candidate supported infanticide when he lobbied and voted against certain bills as an Illinois representative in 2001-2003. Obama counters by saying that he did not support “infanticide”, and that any infant should be protected, and was protected under existing law.
So, why the seeming contradiction? It all comes down to how you define “infant.” Notice the quote from Obama, on the Illinois senate floor in 2001:
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.
The issue, in Obama’s mind, is whether a fetus, outside of the womb, is viable. If it is not, then in order to protect the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe V Wade in 1973, he wants to legally deny it personhood.
Do you see the progression? Now, not only are children in the womb denied their human rights, but children outside of the womb are denied personhood. Consider that many people today (not only the unborn) could be defined as unviable. (Previable, unviable, what’s the difference?) Will they too be denied personhood?
In the end, it must be understood that men do not have the right to define who is human. That right belongs to God alone. Despite recently claiming that deciding such matters is above his “pay grade”, Obama seems more than willing to put his own arbitrary definition of life into effect as public policy and law.
