Human Life Defended in All Places and All Times
I believe we have crossed a line in this country, and almost nobody noticed.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama has been charged by some with supporting infanticide. The charge is serious, and many have reacted with disgust that anyone would make it. Many are offended, not by Obama’s actions, but by those who call attention to them.
Beginning mostly in the 1990s, the anti-abortion movement tried a new strategy. Activists started calling attention to the more extreme edges of US abortion policy, and pro-life legislators introduced various pieces of legislation that had dual aims: to find and impose limitations on abortion that courts would uphold, and to use the votes on these measures as political tools. Most Americans, in poll after poll, favor keeping abortion legal, but also approve of various limitations that the pro- abortion choice movement opposes. These include, in varying degrees, waiting periods, parental notification for minors, and bans on partial-birth abortion. One such piece of legislation, introduced in Congress and in various states, was known as the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. These Born Alive, or “BAIPA” bills would make clear that any infants — accidentally “born alive” during an abortion — are classed as “persons” under the law and are entitled to legal protection, including medical care that would be provided to any other person.
Obama opposed various versions of such bills while in the Illinois legislature. For the facts on this, I will refer you to the article by Factcheck.org titled Obama and ‘Infanticide’. Please read it; I will not attempt to summarize all of it and there is little point to reading what follows if you do not read that article.
Factcheck.org.
I believe this organization can be trusted whenever it is checking a concrete fact, in the format “is X true, or is not-X true?” I believe they are less trustworthy, but worthy of consideration, when dealing with less concrete factual disputes, such as “Candidate A claims, X, but Candidate B claims Y.” Both can be true, and your determination of which you find more persuasive is a matter of judgment, not facts. The article on BAIPA has both types of disputes.
Obama and BAIPA
The more concrete factual dispute — found against Obama by Factcheck, — related to Obama’s explanation of why he voted against certain versions of the Illinois BAIPA. As stated by Factcheck:
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.We find that, as the NRLC said in a recent statement, Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported. Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus, according to an undisputed summary written immediately after the committee’s 2003 mark-up session.
Factcheck explains in more detail that after Obama provided his explanation — and accused the NLRC of lying, the National Right to Life Committee (NLRC) produced documents from the Illinois legislature and the relevant committees that showed that the bills that Obama opposed included the language he said he would have supported. The Factcheck page linked above has the details. Since the NLRC produced those materials, and since Factcheck confirmed them, Obama has shifted to other explanations (also covered by Factcheck). Obama has also never publicly apologized to the NLRC for falsely accusing them of lying.
Obama’s alternative defense to his votes on the Illinois BAIPA are based on three arguments, some of which are addressed in the Factcheck article:
2. Infants born during abortions after during early stages of gestation, such as 20 weeks, have little to no chance of surviving even with all possible medical care; and
3. he does not support infanticide but he does oppose attempts to limit abortion rights, and this motivation must be taken into account when characterizing his position.
Factcheck summarizes the existing Illinois law as follows:
physicians performing abortions when the fetus is viable must use the procedure most likely to preserve the fetus’ life; must be attended by another physician who can care for a born-alive infant; and must “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion.
Here is the issue. Once the baby is born — no matter what stage of development — it stops being a fetus and must immediately be considered a person under any legal definition. Anything else is an attempt to evade this central point. To allow someone who was trying to terminate that life moments earlier to make a determination of whether the child deserves medical care is preposterous. Such a self-interested party would never be allowed to make a life and death decision under any other circumstances.
That the baby might die anyway is not a defense. The failure to provide care is meant to guarantee death. That is its purpose. All babies require care, and will die without it. Traditionally in the ancient world, infanticide was performed by abandoning the child. Making no effort to save these lives is infanticide.
Finally, I think that Factcheck misstates the issue regarding the point that Obama’s opposition to this bill was motivated by support for abortion rather than support for infanticide when it says:
Obama’s critics are free to speculate on his motives for voting against the bills, and postulate a lack of concern for babies’ welfare. But his stated reasons for opposing “born-alive” bills have to do with preserving abortion rights, a position he is known to support and has never hidden.
I do not think the issue is whether Obama supports infanticide. I believe the issue is that Obama will tolerate infanticide if the alternative is a reduction of abortion rights. Obama — and his supporters — seem to consider this a defense. It is not, however, a defense, but an admission. If you do not want to be accused of supporting infanticide, you should stop searching for good ways to end the sentence:
“I voted against providing medical care to fully-born infants because . . . .”
It doesn’t matter that the doctor and the mother had the legal right to terminate the child moments earlier.
It doesn’t matter that requiring such care might threaten abortion rights.
It doesn’t matter that your political opponents drafted the bill for the express purpose of putting you in a difficult position.
There is no morally acceptable closing to that sentence.
In the ancient world, infanticide was practiced almost universally, and as far as I know, Judaism stood alone is prohibiting it. Building on its Jewish roots, Christianity also forbade infanticide (and abortion) from its earliest days. The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache said “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” The spread of Christianity worldwide is generally credited — by historians of all stripes — with spreading the taboo against infanticide.
For 35 years, supporters of abortion rights have assured us that their support for abortion was based on the right of the mother to control her own body, and that there would be no slippery slope towards infanticide. That is no longer true, if it ever was. We have crossed a line. After two thousand years of forbidding infanticide, we are about to elect a man to the Presidency who will tolerate it — if the price is a reduction in abortion rights.
I recommend the following essays on this specific topic:
Life Lies by David Freddoso.
Obama and Infanticide by
UPDATE:
Planned Parenthood and Infanticide That’s a link to a post at Hot Air with a video from Students for Life of America with footage from an interview at a Planned Parenthood facility in which the PP rep admits they perfo,m abortions in which the baby is born alive, at 22 weeks, and left to die without care. The video is disturbing but not graphic.
H/T The Anchoress (scroll to bottom).
