The Obamessiah And Abortion

Almost amazingly, the debate on abortion has been somewhat muted in this election cycle.  My guess is that it's because the war and the economy are being debated with such ferocity that people just don't have that much time or energy to take up another emotionally taxing battle.  But, it's still an important issue, especially for Christians, and needs to be discussed.  Fortunately, there is plenty to mentally chew on when it comes to the Obamessiah and abortion. 

In a previous post I blogged about how Obama's views are not just pro-choice, but radically pro-abortion.  He was responsible for tanking an Illinois bill that would have essentially prevented infanticide of babies that were born alive despite efforts to abort them.  I have heard and read defenses of that vote because he didn't want to infringe on a woman's right to an abortion at all.  While I hesitate to say that it's okay to kill a bill like this simply on a legal technicality, it appears that even that defense has now unraveled.

We'll start with Michelle Malkin, who reports on a new paper trail that has been discovered that shows this technicality isn't exactly the way he portrays it:

Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an IL state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion - even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 - denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions - were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose.

Yuval Levin at NRO adds some more details:

Six years ago, Congress passed the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act," making it illegal to kill a child who is fully born during an attempted abortion. The bill passed without a single opposing vote in either house, and was signed into law by President Bush on August 5, 2002. When he was a state senator at that same time, Barack Obama opposed a state version of the bill in Illinois. His explanation for the vote since then has been that the state version did not include a so-called "neutrality clause" which says explicitly that the bill is not meant to influence the legal standing of a fetus before birth one way or another. The federal law contained such a clause, and the state law, Obama has long insisted, did not. As recently as June 30, the Obama campaign made that case to answer the charge (in that case from Bill Bennett) that Obama had opposed the Born-Alive Act.

But now, the National Right to Life Committee has uncovered proof that Obama in fact voted in committee against even the version of the Illinois Born-Alive Act that did include exactly the same "neutrality clause" as the federal bill. On March 12, 2003, when the bill was being debated, an amendment was added that inserted the neutrality language of the federal bill verbatim into the Illinois bill. Obama voted for the amendment (that's the vote on the left-hand column on this committee vote record), and then voted against the amended bill (that's the vote on the right on the same document). All the Democrats on the committee (which Obama chaired) followed his lead, and the bill was defeated.

This was, again, legislation that in the same form had by then passed unanimously at the federal level. Even NARAL did not oppose it. Apparently Barack Obama did, and his old explanation for doing so seems at odds with the facts.

Since the facts of your own votes deny your story, Obamessiah, what's the new story?  If anyone in the media would have the guts to ask this question, I'll bet anyone $100 we'd see a lame statement filled with a bunch of 'uhhhs' that constitutes yet another in his ever-lengthening list of flip-flops.  But don't count on the question being asked.

By the way, Malkin's link also references the Democrats' efforts at re-writing the record on abortion at large:

The Democratic Party is engaged in a political high-wire act -- trying to bring in pro-life supporters without offending its pro-choice base.

This is basically a puff-piece about how Democrats are now entertaining more flexibility of pro-lifers to try to attract voters in this close election, and one of the most breathtakingly bold attempts to re-write history I can think of.  Doug Bandow explains that by showing how the Democrat party is -- despite the conventional wisdom to the contrary -- the party of intolerance:

In selecting a running mate, Barack Obama supposedly hopes to create a diverse ticket. The most likely picks are white males, centrist in politics and low-key in demeanor. But it appears that one litmus test remains: support for abortion.

This may sound surprising at first — for example, Democrats for Life of America has talked up Virginia's Gov. Tim Kaine, a Roman Catholic and one-time missionary. However, Kaine takes the standard-liberal personally-opposed-but-let-it-happen position. When he ran for governor, he promised to implement restrictive state laws and supported a ban on partial-birth abortion, but his backing for Roe v. Wade places him well within the Democratic mainstream. If a politician won't work to overturn Roe, he or she differs only at the margin from full-throttled abortion-rights advocates.

Obama is reportedly also considering Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, another personally-opposed-politically-okay-with-it Catholic. Planned Parenthood has endorsed her.

Obama can control who gets an entry to the veep sweepstakes, but his preferences have created trouble for him with the left-wing evangelicals he has consulted. They may run left on economics, but to their credit Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, and similarly minded "progressives" have pushed Obama to support an "abortion-reduction agenda." Most of the policies have nothing directly to do with abortion, but, in Campolo's words, "address the economic problems that are driving hundreds of thousands of young women to think that abortion is their only option." Alas, never has he demonstrated that significant numbers of young women eliminate their babies because of a lack of day care. And the minimum wage is more likely to keep a poor woman out of work than to increase her income.

But even if one believes abortion should be legal, it still makes sense to condemn it. In fact, if one is truly "personally opposed" — as Michelman and Kissling clearly are not, but as many prominent liberals claim to be — that is the only possible response.

Surely it isn't that hard to understand why some might think it better to birth than to kill one's baby. Often pregnancy is unwanted, but other than in the case of rape, it remains freely chosen. If Obama truly wants a diverse ticket — one that reflects the country's views — he should take into account the fact that many Americans see the issue this way.

Bandow's conclusion is that the Obamessiah's choice for VP could be a signal of how he will balance his pro-abortion record (and, presumably, his views) and what the consensus of his party may be.  It should be interesting to see what he does.

The point of this is that if abortion is a big deal to you, Barack Obama is the worst possible choice.

One last article to reference.  David Limbaugh wrote a scathing piece about the 'tolerance' of the Democrat party when it comes to the key issue of abortion:

ABC reports that the group "Democrats for Life," whose title gives new meaning to "oxymoronic," decided last week not to press the Democratic Party to restore a life-tolerant "conscience clause" to its party platform. Isn't it time the party quit this charade that it wants to make abortion "rare"?

The "conscience clause," which appeared in the 1996 and 2000 platforms, at least paid lip service to tempering the platform's express support of a woman's "right to choose," stating that the "Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party."

But the party ended all pretense of inclusion in 2004 by replacing the "conscience clause" with a statement that Democrats "stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine" abortion rights. And despite the obviously halfhearted efforts of Democrats for Life, the clause will also be absent from the 2008 platform.

As Democrats for Life's Director Kristen Day asked during the 2004 platform debate: "So what are they saying, that because we want to protect the rights of the unborn, our own party says we're automatically Republicans? This has to be one reason that our party is having trouble appealing to many people in churches."

Amen, Kristen. But perhaps instead you ought to be asking yourself why you are still a Democrat and why you gave up in 2008 with barely a whimper. Just how committed can you and your organization possibly be to protecting the lives of the unborn when you shamelessly roll over on the issue that presumably matters the most to you?

Actually, "shamelessly roll over" doesn't do justice to what happened. Kristen Day told ABC News, "We decided not to offer an amendment because we are working with the party to try to solve this issue."

What?

That's like saying they'll begin to fight after conceding defeat.

Besides, just what incentive do the overwhelmingly dominant pro-abortion forces in the party have to work with Day when they succeeded, effortlessly, in inserting the following language in the platform?

"The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right."

No mincing words there.

This party has the temerity to pretend it is inclusive and wants to reduce abortions yet bans any dissent on the issue! It doesn't even want pro-life people in the party — unless they stay in the closet. Day and her group apparently value party membership so highly that they've dutifully agreed to march quietly back into the closet.

For insight into what Democratic honchos mean when they cynically hold themselves out as advocates of reducing abortion, we must turn to the words of the Rev. Jim Wallis. He is the author of "God's Politics" and an outspoken proponent of the idea that Democrats should reclaim "values voters" because their policies are more in line with Christian truth, which assertion is only slightly less incoherent than the label "Democrats for Life."

In pushing for an "abortion reduction" plank in the Democratic Party platform, Wallis said: "You don't have to take a different stance about a woman's right to choose. But you begin with the need for reducing abortion dramatically."

Why reduce abortion if it is not immoral, Rev. Wallis? Well, read on because he answers that very question. "Taking abortion seriously as a moral issue would help Democrats a great deal with a constituency that is already leaning in their direction on poverty and the environment. There are literally millions of votes at stake."

Aha. So it's about votes, not about protecting the innocent unborn. As if thinking people would have concluded otherwise.

But how can we reasonably expect a party, whose platform is supposed to mirror the agenda of its presidential candidate, to adopt anything but a "strong and unequivocal" statement promoting abortion when that candidate, in a moment of spontaneous candor, said that if his daughters made a "mistake," he wouldn't "want them punished with a baby"?

Are pro-life Obama supporters so selfishly hooked on a feeling -- the euphoric state of Obamamania -- that they'll back Obama and his party in the most immoral crusade since slavery? It appears so.

Limbaugh is exactly right!  It seems that any position other than pro-choice is unacceptable to the Democrat party establishment.  The more radically left the party shifts, the more mainstream Democrat voters fall off the bandwagon.  This is most definitely why the Democrat party has had a real problem attracting churchgoers in the past two presidential elections, and why the last couple of Democrat candidates have had advisers specifically dedicated to 'reaching' those churchgoers.  They just don't get how their 'tolerance' doesn't wash with the facts of how the party treats pro-lifers in their midst, and that bothers their rank-and-file, especially those who do value life.

So, what can we take from all of these things?  The Democrat party clearly favors abortion, and if we listen to the presumptive Democrat nominee, they favor it to the point of unlimited taxpayer-funded abortions on demand.  His record also shows a truly twisted effort to kill a bill that would have prevented born alive babies from being killed if they were supposed to have been aborted, a bill that not even the big abortion rights groups opposed.

If abortion -- the lives of 1.3 millions of babies each year -- matters to you, you need to ask yourself how you can honestly support the Obamessiah and the Democrat party.

There's my two cents.