How Born Alive has changed the abortion debate
During "The O'Reilly Factor" on Sept. 29, host Bill O'Reilly said, "Apparently, you violate a woman's privacy if you set any restrictions on aborting a fetus at all or even try to protect a baby after its birth. If you do that, extremists will claim you are violating a woman's privacy rights."
O'Reilly would not have included "or even try to protect a baby after its birth" a few months ago, because it wasn't commonly known until then that abortion extremists like Barack Obama consider it a "burden" to the mother's "original decision," as he put it, to give abortion survivors lifesaving medical help.
But the debate over Obama's opposition as state senator to the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act has provided an unforeseen teaching opportunity to the American public, much as the debate over partial-birth abortion did a decade ago.
It was eye-opening to most of America when BornAliveTruth.org released an ad last month featuring abortion survivor Gianna Jessen denouncing Obama for his opposition to giving legal protection to abortion survivors like her.
Babies survive abortion? Until Gianna put a face to it, such talk was usually dismissed as wild-eyed pro-life urban legend.
This information should give soft abortion proponents pause to reconsider what in the world they've accepted as a right. Certainly, third-trimester abortions were not packaged as part of the original deal, but that's where legalized abortion has brought us. Is this really the America they want – one that condones infanticide? Hope not.
And debate over Born Alive has opened yet another door, a door to congressional hearings and enforcement mechanisms, no matter who becomes president and no matter which party controls Congress.
The federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act, signed into law in 2002, simply stated that babies born alive, no matter what gestational age or if aborted and unwanted, were legal persons. Three sentences long, Born Alive included no penalties should a person or entity kill or neglect to death one of these littlest constitutionally protected people.
Thus, in the six years since Born Alive's passage, there have been no prosecutions, even though there have been at least three credible instances of abortion survivors being killed or shelved to die without appropriate medical intervention.
Obama and his supporters have spent considerable blustery time denying he would abandon abortion survivors to die, as recently as the last presidential debate when Obama said, "If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold lifesaving treatment from an infant, that's because it's not true."
If Obama becomes president, we will definitely find out. He should anticipate and welcome pro-life calls to ensure the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act is enforced.
Should McCain win, Democrats controlling Congress should anticipate and welcome those same calls for hearings and additional laws to ensure abortion survivors are legally protected.
And believe me, there will be calls.
Contact: Jill Stanek
Source: WorldNetDaily
Source URL: www.wnd.com
Publish Date: October 22, 2008
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/081023_1.htm
