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By Scott Tibbs, September 5, 2008
One tactic the Left uses in defending Barack Obama's vote against legislation that would prohibit killing a baby that survives an abortion and is born is to claim that it is "already illegal to kill a born baby in Illinois." But did Illinois law already prohibit killing a baby who survives an abortion and is born?
| Obama's next line of defense is that laws already existed in Illinois to protect these babies. Not so: The law protected only "viable" infants. Hence the attorney general's decision not to act against Christ Hospital. |
Source: National Review, August 22, 2008.
| In any case, the 1975 law does not apply to non-viable infants born alive. According to Paul Linton, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, the 2003 bill was a response to the question, "What duties are owed to a non-viable child born alive?" The bill sought to guarantee comfort care for non-viable infants similar to the care that would be provided to any terminally ill adult. "Many of these babies lived for hours after birth," Susan T. Muskett, legislative counsel at the NRLC, writes in an email. "Are these babies medical waste, or persons protected by the Constitution? Obama's reaction was to consider them non-entities under Roe v. Wade until they were 'viable,' even when they were gasping outside the mother." |
Source: Weekly Standard, August 13, 2008.
| Illinois law has rules - loophole-ridden rules, but rules - requiring treatment of babies who have "sustainable survivability." If an attempted abortion of a pre-viable fetus results in a live birth, the law did not protect the infant. Nurse Jill Stanek said that at her hospital "abortions" were repeatedly performed by inducing the live birth of a pre-viable fetus and then leaving it to die. When she made her report, the attorney general said that no law had been broken. That's why legislators proposed a bill to fill the gap. |
Source: National Review, August 20, 2008.
In fact, Obama's own words give this claim credibility. Obama explains his objection to SB1093:
| Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a nine-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. |
Source: ilga.gov legislative records. The emphasis is mine.
Let's examine the intellectual consistency of those who claim the bills did not prohibit anything. As I have demonstrated multiple times, Barack Obama came to the same conclusion I did in his speech against SB1093. (Link is a PDF.) Are my critics willing to call Obama a liar? If I lied about the bill, so did Obama. It is just that simple. So I challenge any Leftist who wishes to claim that I "lied" about what SB1093 did:
- Call Barack Obama a liar.
- Retract your claim that I lied.
- Do neither and prove yourself to be a hypocrite.
Those are your only three choices. Obama and I both have publicly stated that SB1093 prohibits killing a baby that survives an abortion and is born. Therefore, if my statement is a lie, then Obama's identical statement is a lie. There is simply no intellectually honest way to call me a liar without also calling Barack Obama a liar.
As to the claim that killing a baby that is born alive was "already illegal", the following sources demonstrate that babies were being born alive as the result of an abortion, and were then killed.
Jill Stanek was a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois in 1999 when she discovered that babies born alive after failed abortions purposely were being left to die in the "soiled utility room," which, says Stanek, is a room where biohazard materials and soiled linens are disposed of.
"That's where nursing staff took these babies and left them to die."
Stanek went public with her traumatizing experiences when hospital staff refused to stop the practice of infanticide. In 2000 she was asked to testify before a U.S. House committee for the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA). The BAIPA was a two-paragraph bill intended to clarify that any baby who is entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who shows any signs of life, is to be regarded as a legal "person" for all federal law purposes, whether or not the baby was born during an attempted abortion. |
Source: Life Site News, August 12, 2008.
(Jill) Stanek claimed that 10 to 20 second-trimester abortions are performed each year at the hospital on babies with birth defects ranging from anencephaly to Down syndrome and spina bifida. Mothers are given labor-inducing drugs and the babies are delivered without being killed in utero.
However, at this early age only a few survive the delivery, but these babies can live for several minutes to six or seven hours. Nurses wrap them in warm blankets but they are given no other care, according to Stanek. If a family member does not want to hold the baby until he or she dies, a nurse or service worker can volunteer. However, if staff members are too busy, the babies are placed in the soiled utility room until death, Stanek insisted. |
Source: National Right to Life News, October 12, 1999.
One of the crusaders for that bill was nurse Jill Stanek, who worked at the Christ Hospital in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago. A mother came in for a second trimester abortion and had what is called an "induced labor abortion" or "prostaglandin abortion." In this procedure, the doctor administers drugs to dilate the mother's cervix and to induce contractions. This forces a small baby out of the mother's womb, and most of the time the baby dies in utero during such an abortion, killed by the contractions.
In the case in question, the baby was one of those born alive. Under such circumstances, the baby is not treated but simply left to die. A nurse was told to put this baby in the soiled utility closet to die (the hospital later claimed there were "comfort rooms" used for such dying babies; some comfort). Ms. Stanek offered to take the baby instead.
She said, "I couldn't let him die alone. And so I held him for the 45 minutes that he moved. He moved a little bit. Of course he didn't cry." Ms. Stanek says she was horrified and went to work in Christ Hospital thinking because of its name, abortion and such other practices would not be tolerated. |
Source: The Bulletin (Philadelphia), August 15, 2008
| Four months ago, Christ Hospital unveiled its "Comfort Room." So now I can no longer say that live aborted babies are left in our Soiled Utility Room to die. We now have this prettily wallpapered room complete with a First Foto machine, baptismal gowns, a footprinter and baby bracelets, so that we can offer keepsakes to parents of their aborted babies. There is even a nice wooden rocker in the room to rock live aborted babies to death. |
Source: World Net Daily, June 18, 2008. (Recounts testimony from March 2002.)
| At issue is an Illinois bill in 2003 called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that Obama voted against, which was modeled on federal legislation enacted the previous year declaring that in failed abortions resulting in a live birth, the baby must be given normal medical treatment. This was in response to a gruesome practice whereby abortions involving induced labor were resulting in unintended live births - and those infants were simply being left to die. By 2003, it already had passed the U.S. Senate without any dissent. |
Source: TownHall.com columnist Joel Mowbray, August 22, 2008.
| The premature babies who were being left to die - the 15 or 20 percent who typically survive induced-labor abortions to be born alive - could live without any care for as long as several hours after birth. The nurse who brought this to the public's attention witnessed one of them being taken to a utility closet and left to die there. The hospital maintained that staffers put the dying babies into "comfort rooms" until they expired. Either way, they were being left to die without any attempt at medical care. Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, after asking the state’s health department to investigate (there was no criminal investigation), wrote a letter stating that his office could take no legal action regarding this practice. |
Source: National Review, August 22, 2008.
The barbaric procedure Obama defended is not unique to the United States:
Botched abortions mean that scores of babies are being born alive and left to die, an official report has revealed.
A total of 66 infants survived NHS termination attempts in one year alone, it emerged.
Rather than dying at birth as was intended, they were able to breathe unaided. About half were alive for an hour, while one survived ten hours. |
Source: Daily Mail, February 4, 2008
Faced with this gruesome and barbaric disregard for human life, both the Illinois state legislature and the U.S. Congress moved to criminalize the procedure. Hillary Clinton, a strong advocate for abortion rights, supported the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act in the U.S. Senate. Barack Obama, when faced with similar legislation as a state senator, opposed two different bills meant to protect babies that survive an abortion and are born alive.
Baron Hill, when faced with a choice between a candidate who supported legislation to protect born alive infants and a candidate who opposed legislation to protect born alive infants, chose the latter. When asked why he endorsed a candidate who defended infanticide, Hill said that it was just "one issue".
Does Baron Hill represent Hoosier values?
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