The Secret Life of Senator Infanticide

Barack Obama's abortion extremism puts him almost alone on a scale of brutal opposition to the right to life.

Indeed, his consistency in voting against Illinois' Born Alive Protection Act has earned Obama the grand title of "Senator Infanticide." As Andrew McCarthy writes, for Obama, the protection of abortion doctors is more important that protecting the lives of children:

There wasn’t any question about what was happening. The abortions were going wrong. The babies weren’t cooperating. They wouldn’t die as planned. Or, as Illinois state senator Barack Obama so touchingly put it, there was “movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.”

No, Senator. They wouldn’t go along with the program. They wouldn’t just come out limp and dead.

They were coming out alive. Born alive. Babies. Vulnerable human beings Obama, in his detached pomposity, might otherwise include among “the least of my brothers.” But of course, an abortion extremist can’t very well be invoking Saint Matthew, can he? So, for Obama, the shunning of these least of our brothers and sisters — millions of them — is somehow not among America’s greatest moral failings.

No. In Obama’s hardball, hard-Left world, these least become “that fetus, or child — however you want to describe it.”

Most of us, of course, opt for “child,” particularly when the “it” is born and living and breathing and in need of our help. Particularly when the “it” is clinging not to guns or religion but to life.

But not Barack Obama. As an Illinois state senator, he voted to permit infanticide. And now, running for president, he banks on media adulation to insulate him from his past.

The record, however, doesn’t lie.

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s the only word that fits. Obama heard the testimony of a nurse, Jill Stanek. She recounted how she’d spent 45 minutes holding a living baby left to die.

The child had lacked the good grace to expire as planned in an induced-labor abortion — one in which an abortionist artificially induces labor with the expectation that the underdeveloped “fetus, or child — however you want to describe it” will not survive the delivery.

Stanek encountered another nurse carrying the child to a “soiled utility room” where it would be left to die. It wasn’t that unusual. The induced-labor method was used for late-term abortions. Many of the babies were strong enough to survive the delivery. At least for a time.

So something had to be done with them. They couldn’t be left out in the open, struggling in the presence of fellow human beings. After all, those fellow human beings — health-care providers — would then be forced to confront the inconvenient question of why they were standing idly by. That would hold a mirror up to the whole grisly business.

Better the utility room. Alone, out of sight and out of mind. Next case.

Stanek’s account enraged the public and shamed into silence most of the country’s staunchest pro-abortion activists. Most, not all. Not Barack Obama.

My friend Hadley Arkes ingeniously argued that legislatures, including Congress, should take up “Born Alive” legislation: laws making explicit what decency already made undeniable: that from the moment of birth — from the moment one is expelled or extracted alive from the birth canal — a human being is entitled to all the protections the law accords to living persons.

Such laws were enacted by overwhelming margins. In the United States Congress, even such pro-abortion activists as Sen. Barbara Boxer went along.

But not Barack Obama. In the Illinois senate, he opposed Born-Alive tooth and nail.

The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn’t oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion that he opposed it because it didn’t contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion that it was unnecessary because Illinois law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn’t — and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?).

What Obama hasn’t offered, however, is the rationalization he vigorously posited during the 2002 Illinois senate debate.

There's more at the link.

One of the most amazing things about all of this, is that as much as I've vehemently opposed Obama on his postmodernism and his deep ties to ideological radicalism, the news of Obama's votes against protecting babies is not only personally insulting, it feels like an assault on basic human decency.

Back in March, when we learned about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, I remember thinking that it couldn't get worse for Obama than this, it couldn't get more controversial than “God damn America.”

But it has gotten worse.

What's become clear this week is that Barack Obama is an inveterate liar. He's not told the truth about his past positions on abortion (his "life lies," in David Freddosso's words), and he's also not been forthcoming on his ties to fugitive terrorist William Ayers and his leadership of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

But that's not all!

We've learned today that Obama published a brief research note in the Harvard Law Review which outlined his early pro-choice jurisprudence. What's most striking about this is not so much Obama's views (as reprehensible as they are), but that he's specifically claimed not to have authored any research during his law school tenure at Harvard University. As Ann Althouse rightly notes:

What is odd is that up until now, we'd been led to think that Obama, despite his stature as president of the Harvard Law Review, had never written anything. Once Politico tracked down the article, the campaign acknowledged that Obama had written it. But why the urge to suppress it? Obama took knocks for his supposed failure to produce any legal scholarship. It seems that abortion is just not something he wants to have to talk about.

Absolutely, and as we're seeing, it's not just abortion: From Trinity United Church of Christ to the Richard J. Daley Library at University of Illinois at Chicago to the pattern of secrecy surrounding every move of his presidential campaign, Barack Obama is engaged in a deep program of deception, dishonesty, obfuscation, and prevarication.

What's shameful is the media's protective cocoon that's enabled this perfidy. As Michael Barone asks, "Why Won't the Mainstream Media Question the Obama Narrative?"

The answer? "Obama's Secret Weapon: The Media."

It's worth a thought...

Related: "University of Illinois to Release Obama Records."