Newt made headlines for this comment at the debate last night:
I had forgotten about that controversy, involving Obama’s obfuscation of his failure to support the Born Alive Infant Protection Act as an Illinois state senator.
Jill Stanek was responsible for bringing attention to the practice of killing babies who survived an abortion:
On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only senator to speak in opposition to a bill that would have banned the practice of leaving premature abortion survivors to die. The bill, SB 1095, was carefully limited, its language unambiguous. It applied only to premature babies, already born alive. It stated simply that under Illinois law, “the words ‘person,’ ‘human being,’ ‘child,’ and ‘individual’ include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”Two related bills introduced that day included slightly more controversial provisions about liability and medical procedure, but SB 1095 did not go nearly that far. This bill did not apply to those not born, nor did it grant born persons anything beyond recognition of their rights as persons.
I remember reading it in 2008 in my pre-blogging days, and frankly, I didn’t remember that Jill Stanek the blogger was the driving force behind the effort to save these children.
When Newt brought it up at the debate, Politico immediately jumped to Obama’s defense, confusing partial-birth abortion (which is bad enough) with post-abortion snuffing out of babies who survived. Politico issued this update:
UPDATE: A couple of conservative readers suggest that I may be wrong in razzing Gingrich on this, as his point likely referred to this legislation specifically, rather than late-term abortion in general. Obama may or may not have been asked about that during the 2008 race
I thought I had once posted about this, but I can’t find it.
Tom Maguire has a good history of Obama’s attempt to obscure his opposition to the bill, and the connivance of the mainstream media in confusing two companion bills to give Obama political cover during the 2008 elections.
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