Born Alive

From Time, via my dad, a pro-life liberal and fervent Obama supporter:

How Valid is Palin's Abortion Attack on Obama?


Tidbits:

"As a state senator, Barack Obama wouldn't even stand up for the rights of infants born alive during an abortion," Sarah Palin said on Saturday, during a Johnstown, Penn. rally. "These infants, often babies with special needs, are simply left to die."
...

The reality is very different. Between 2001 and 2003, Obama repeatedly voted to oppose bills in the Illinois Senate that would have declared, simply, that any child "born alive" as a result of an abortion shall be protected as a "human person" under the law. The bills broadly defined a live birth as any child outside the mother who shows voluntary movement, breathes or has a beating heart, among other attributes.

At the time, as the Obama campaign has pointed out, Illinois state law already required doctors to provide medical treatment for all children born after abortions who demonstrated viability, which was defined under the law as "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support." The Born Alive legislation, therefore, would have primarily impacted a different category of babies — those born with life signs that doctors decided did not have a reasonable chance of survival. ...


It is without dispute that Obama is pro-choice, showing a long record of opposing efforts that might limit legal access to abortion. To suggest, however, that Obama supported the death of children born alive after abortions is misleading. State law in Illinois, which Obama supported, has always protected the life of a child born alive after abortions, if doctors believed the child had a reasonable chance of survival.

Monday, October 13, 2008