Barack Obama’s Campaign Responds to Charge He Lied About Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 14, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The campaign of pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama has responded to charges that he misrepresented his views on an abortion bill that protected babies who survive abortions. The Obama camp essentially repeated the claims that Obama opposed the bill for legitimate reasons.
At issue are Obama’s votes during his tenure in the Illinois legislature.
Obama chaired a committee that oversaw a bill requiring appropriate medical care for babies who survive abortions or were left to die after a purposeful premature birth.
He ultimately voted against the bill claiming it would somehow interfere the so-called right to abortion under Roe v. Wade and said he would have voted for a federal bill doing the same thing but with language added making it irrelevant to Roe.
However, new documents released by the National Right to Life Committee from the Illinois legislature show the same language found in the federal bill was added as an amendment to the Illinois legislation and that Obama voted for it but ultimately voted down the anti-infanticide bill.
The Obama camp responded to the charges saying, "In recent days the right wing blogosphere and rumor mongers have falsely accused Senator Obama of misrepresenting his position on ‘Born Alive’ legislation."
The Obama campaign claimed, "Senator Obama supported such legislation when it did not threaten the Constitutional rights embodied in Roe v Wade."
Obama staffers issued a factsheet recycling old newspaper stories and documents with Obama’s old claims on the subject and didn’t offer much new evidence
"The state and federal born alive infant protection acts did not include exactly the same language," Obama’s camp claimed and it complained the Illinois bill said "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.”
However, Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for National Right to Life, says Obama’s campaign is still misrepresenting the truth.
"It is rather astonishing that, in light of the new documents that came to light this week, the Obama campaign here continues to brazenly misrepresent the content of the state Born-Alive Infants Protection Act that Obama killed in 2003," he told LifeNews.com.
Johnson said the language of the abortion-neutrality clause Obama supported was the exact same language as the federal version and Obama is wrong to say he opposed the bill because it didn’t have the language in place.
He also said the Obama campaign is falsely saying that neutrality amendment was not included in the final language of the bill Obama voted against and pointed to official documents saying that’s not the case.
"The claimed differences cited simply did not exist at the time that Obama and his colleagues voted down the bill on March 13, 2003," Johnson said.
Johnson also said the House of Representatives in Congress voted for the anti-infanticide bill in 2000 — long before the neutrality clause was added. That bipartisan vote of 380-15 approved the bill and put Obama out of step with even pro-abortion lawmakers who supported it.
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