In an interview following his abysmal performance at the this weekend’s Saddleback Civil Forum on Presidency, Barack Obama angrily and defensively stood behind his voting record on Illinois’ Born Alive Infant Protection Act, saying pro-life groups were “lying” about his record. Transcript and video here.
UPDATE FOR CLARITY: The Obama campaign’s admission that what Obama says in the video is a lie is bolded in the 7th paragraph following the video of Saturday’s interview.
Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say –that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level.
[...]
It defies commonsense and it defies imagination and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive and it’s an example of the kind of politics that we have to get beyond. It’s one thing for people to disagree with me about the issue of choice, it’s another thing for people to out and out misrepresent my positions repeatedly, even after they know that they’re wrong. And that’s what’s been happening.
Lies have been exposed on the subject, but it is Obama who has turned out to be a liar.
The Born Alive Infant Protection Act sought assurance that medical care would be provided to infants born alive after botched abortion attempts.
Obama stated that he opposed one version of the bill on the basis of fear “that the legislation could be interpreted more broadly to protect fetuses that were not yet viable — thus threatening Roe v. Wade,” but would have supported a version that was identical to what was eventually presented on the federal level and passed with a unanimous vote. The federal version included language that specifically stated it was not to be construed as related to Roe v. Wade in any way.
As it turns out, Obama did not support the Illinois version of the bill that was virtually identical to the one eventually presented at the federal level.
The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a “Born Alive” bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.
The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.
Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported “was not the bill that was presented at the state level.”
His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law. Those concerns did not exist for the federal bill, because there is no federal abortion law.
In 2005, the campaign noted, a “Born Alive” bill passed the Illinois Legislature after another clause had been added that explicitly stated that the legislation would have no effect on existing state abortion laws.
Told of the campaign’s explanation, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, Douglas Johnson, was dubious. “These are newly manufactured and highly implausible excuses,” he said. “There is no way that the bill would have had any effect on any method of abortion.” Mr. Johnson said the version Mr. Obama voted down clearly applied only to fetuses that emerged from the womb alive.
Jill Stanek, a principal in the matter that led to Illinois’ Born Alive Infant Protection Act, describes the situation and Obama’s radical stance on the legislation in the video below.
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