Follow up on Obama & Abortion

While doing research for last night's blog entry, I ran across Obama's claim to Relevant Magazine regarding the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:

The other email rumor that’s been floating around is that somehow I’m unwilling to see doctors offer life-saving care to children who were born as a result of an induced abortion. That’s just false. There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the “Born Alive” bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill. The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.

Ever since that time, emails have been sent out suggesting that, somehow, I would be in favor of letting an infant die in a hospital because of this particular vote. That’s not a fair characterization, and that’s not an honest characterization. It defies common sense to think that a hospital wouldn't provide life-saving treatment to an infant that was alive and had a chance of survival.

So I dutifully went back and researched to verify my earlier claims.  I could try to expound upon what I found, but in the end, the best-supported, clearest, and simplest recounting of the entire BAIPA issue is presented by the National Right to Life Committee.  If you have any doubt that my and others' claims about Obama's stand on abortion are true, please read, carefully and patiently, through the entire, long page at this link.  They use his own actions and words throughout the years to build a very simple, straightforward case that Obama's take on Roe vs. Wade is among the most extreme. 

In short, his words and actions indicate his apparent belief that an abortion must be considered in progress and incomplete until the baby dies, whether she is inside or outside the womb.  I think they make very clear that this is not some pipe-dream, biased interpretation of hardcore, right-wing extremists, but instead a plain reading of the evidence.  As I stated before, it stretches credibility to believe that a man who has demonstrated such a view through the years is suddenly going to endorse restrictions on abortion like he claimed to Relevant Magazine that he would.