Live aborted babies?

This op-ed goes beyond the Senate campaign between Keyes and Obama, it deals with the issue of how to treat babies that survive an attemtped abortion. It is emotional and thought provoking.
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STANEK: Obama’s Waterloo - Live aborted babies?

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

By Jill Stanek (Jill@illinoisleader.com)

"Both times Obama voted against legislation that would define all live born babies as legal persons, and thus protected by the 14th Amendment, even if they were aborted alive and unwanted," Jill Stanek writes today
OPINION -- I was at the rally last Sunday when Alan Keyes announced his Republican candidacy for U.S. Senate.


Keyes was giving a rousing speech, and I was clapping and chanting “Al-an! Al-an!” with the rest of the crowd, when he began explaining exactly why he decided to run:



What finally caught my eye, however… what finally arrested my attention and forced me to consider whether I not only have the opportunity to oppose [Obama], but the obligation… was when I learned that he had actually, in April 2002, apparently cast a vote that would continue to allow live birth abortions in the State of Illinois.

Unprepared for the moment, I froze and tears welled in my eyes.


As a nurse who witnessed babies being aborted alive, I testified in both 2001 and 2002 before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Keyes’ rival, Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama, is a member.


Both times Obama voted against legislation that would define all live born babies as legal persons, and thus protected by the 14th Amendment, even if they were aborted alive and unwanted.


Despite Obama's negative vote, BAIPA passed in committee. Obama voted “present” for it on the Senate floor in 2001 and “no” in 2002.


As Chairman of the Senate Health & Human Services Committee, Obama prevented BAIPA from even getting a fair hearing in 2003.


In all, BAIPA has been introduced and failed four times in four years in Illinois, thanks in no small part to Barack Obama.


I now know Obama’s mannerisms well, the way he leans back in his chair, thoughtfully rests his chin in his hand, and with Daschle-like softness of voice, skillfully reasons that allowing live aborted babies to die is necessary to protect the rights of aborting mothers and aborting doctors.


Not surprisingly, Chicago Tribune rock star groupies Liam Ford, John Chase, David Mendell, and Rick Pearson reported on all this Monday by doing the Obama Parrot Blah Blah, a new word dance created by the liberal press to idolize Obama when he spins. They dutifully repeated:



A spokesman said Obama voted against the abortion legislation because it included provisions that "would have taken away from doctors their professional judgment when a fetus is viable." The legislation, which was defeated, would have made it illegal for doctors to let a fetus die if it happened to be delivered alive during an abortion.

Quite simply, Barack Obama is a liar.


Here is the wording to BAIPA, for liberal reporters too busy doing the Obama word dance to research for themselves:



...[T]he words ‘person’, ‘human being’, ‘child’, and ‘individual’, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any state of development.

[T]he term ‘born alive’, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.


Now tell me how BAIPA “would have taken away from doctors their professional judgment when a fetus is viable."


On the national level, President Bush signed BAIPA into law on August 5, 2002. Most people think BAIPA’s passage stopped live birth abortion. But it didn’t. BAIPA only defines personhood, with the implication that all born babies receive equal protection under the law - to receive medical attention, for instance - even if they are not wanted.


Furthermore, federal law only applies to federal statutes, so each state must pass its own BAIPA to impact state law.


Interestingly, for politicians and reporters so dazzled by abortion they can’t see straight, the current void in Illinois law allowing live aborted babies to die unaided has applications outside of abortion.


Earlier this year the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the two-time murder conviction of Elizabeth Ehlert, a Palatine resident who killed her newborn daughter at delivery in her Palatine home in 1990.


Ehlert’s boyfriend heard the baby cry from the hall, and air was found in the baby’s lungs after she was recovered from a nearby creek where the couple dumped her.


But since no one witnessed the delivery, no one could say whether the baby’s umbilical cord had been cut - if she was completely separated from her mother when killed - so the Court overturned Ehlert’s conviction.


BAIPA in Illinois would protect babies like unnamed Baby Girl Ehlert as well as countless other unnamed aborted babies who die alone in hospital and abortion clinic soiled utility rooms.


On the federal level, BAIPA passed in the United States Senate 98-0. Ultra-liberal Senators like Kerry, Durbin, Clinton, Kennedy, and Boxer voted for it. The latter two even spoke in its favor on the Senate floor.


That means that Barack Obama is to the left of Kerry, now known as our most liberal senator.


What a relief it would be for Kerry to have Obama take his spot.


What a deadly nightmare it would be for Illinois children.


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