Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Born Alive Infants Cry Out to Obama: "We Don't Want To Die!"

MoveOn.Org recently posted a video on its website showing a young mother holding her infant son, "Alex". The woman looks into the camera and addresses Senator John McCain.

"Hi John McCain, this is Alex and he's my first child," she says. ..."John McCain, when you said you would stay in Iraq..., where you counting on Alex? Because, if you were, you can't have him."

However, in light of the fact that Barack Obama has consistently voted against the "Born-Alive Infant Protection Act" - aimed at protecting living babies who've survived attempted abortions - it would behoove one of those surviving infants to post a video of its own.

"Hi Barack, Obama," the infant would say, while looking into the camera. "When you voted in favor of infanticide, were you counting on taking away my life too? Because, if you were, you can't have mine!"

Jill Stanek, a former registered nurse from Oak lawn, Illinois, had this to say about Obama's opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:

Excerpted from Citizen Link:

On Jan. 10, 2005, newly elected U.S. Sen. Barack Obama visited former colleagues and staffers at the Illinois state Capitol, where he had served seven years as state senator. I happened to be at the Capitol that day, too, and a friend and I took the opportunity to speak to Obama, who had not yet achieved rock-star status and was still approachable.

We were in Springfield to lobby for passage of the state Born Alive Infant Protection Act, legislation that would require hospitals to care for infants who survive an abortion. Obama spoke against the legislation in 2001 and 2002 and single-handily defeated it in committee in 2003.

My friend stood in Obama’s path and said, “Senator, we are going to pass Born Alive here in Illinois this year.”

Obama smiled smoothly and agreed, “I think you will,” adding, “I would have voted for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois had it been worded the same as the federal bill. I think that’s the position the Democrats should take.”

There’s just one thing he forgot to mention: Obama had stopped his committee from adding the federal wording.

With Obama no longer in the state Senate, the Born Alive legislation passed in 2005.

First encounter
An Illinois lawmaker offered the first draft of the state’s Born Alive Infant Protection Act in 2001 after I revealed publicly that Christ Hospital left babies who survived abortion — viable babies whose delivery was induced, and whom the abortionist intended to kill but somehow survived — in a utility room to die.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Patrick O’Malley of Oak Lawn defined “born alive” using language identical to that of federal legislation introduced in 2000 by Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., who in turn drafted wording developed by the World Health Organization in 1950 and adopted by the United Nations in 1955:

The term “born alive,” with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

I first encountered Barack Obama on March 27, 2001, when I testified before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he was a member. My testimony included my description of holding a premature aborted baby until he died:

One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down’s syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about ½ pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe.

Toward the end, he was so quiet that I couldn’t tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken...

...Obama opposed Born Alive in committee, but voted “present” — neither “yes” nor “no,” but merely “present” — on the state Senate floor, one of many “present” votes that Hillary Clinton has cited as evidence that Obama lacks leadership skills. Clinton voted for the federal Born Alive bill, putting her on record as more pro-life than Obama.

The legislation passed the Senate but did not survive in the House.

When Rep. O’Malley reintroduced Born Alive and its companion bills in 2002, they headed again to the same committee, where Obama rewrote history:

"Ms. Stanek, your initial testimony last year showed your dismay at the lack of regard for human life," Obama said. "I agreed with you last year, and we suggested that there be a "Comfort Room" or something of that nature be done. The hospital acknowledged that and changes were made and you are still unimpressed. It sounds to me like you are really not interested in how these fetuses are treated, but rather not providing absolutely any medical care or life to them."

Of course, Obama had not agreed with me the year before, and I was the one who had told him about the Comfort Room, which the hospital created in response to my testimony: "We now have this prettily wallpapered room. … There is even a nice wooden rocker in the room to rock live aborted babies to death."

The hospital made live birth abortions look nicer, but the end result was still dead babies.

“What we are doing here is to create one more burden on women, and I can’t support that,” Obama concluded, and voted “no” in committee again.

The bill went again to the Senate floor, where Obama was the sole speaker against it.

...Democrats won control of the state Senate in November 2002, and when Born Alive was reintroduced for the third time in 2003, it was directed to the Obama-chaired, infamously liberal Health and Human Services Committee, where he simply refused to call it for a vote.

By this time Obama was running for U.S. Senate. He won his primary in March 2004, and Republicans recruited former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes, who lived in Maryland, to oppose him. It was Obama’s position against Born Alive that persuaded Keyes to run, as he stated in his announcement speech:

"When I was first approached about this possibility… I have to say that my reaction was negative…. What finally caught my eye, however… what finally arrested my attention and forced me to consider whether I not only had the opportunity to oppose him, but the obligation… was when I learned that Obama.. in April 2002,.. cast a vote that would continue to allow live birth abortions in the state of Illinois … .

"We are talking about a situation in which, in the course of an abortion procedure, a child has been born alive — is out of the womb, breathing and living on its own — and he cast a vote against the idea that we should not stand by and let that child die!"

And from World Net Daily, on Obama's support of Partial-birth abortion:

In answering a question about abortion while campaigning in Iowa last year, the always deliberative Obama said: "I think the American people struggle with two principles: There's the principle that the fetus is not just an appendage, it's potential life. … They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies."

The fetus is "potential life"?

Shortly after the Supreme Court's decision last year upholding the constitutionality of the ban on partial-birth abortions, Obama spoke at a Planned Parenthood conference in Washington, D.C. Condemning the Court's decision, he said that it was part of "a concerted effort to steadily roll back" legal abortion.

Criticizing Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in the case, Obama said, "Justice Kennedy knows many things, but my understanding is that he does not know how to be a doctor."

Of course, Justice Kennedy's job is not to be doctor, but to be a judge. And in doing so, he included in his opinion testimony of a nurse who participated in a partial-birth abortion procedure:

"The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out. … The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby's brains out. … Now the baby went completely limp. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta, and the instruments he had just used."

Thus the end of what, for Sen. Obama, was "potential life."

Also see, "Nurse's Testimony shocks Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee" to read Jill Staneck's own experience with Born Alive Infant's who were left to die.

And lest you still believe Barack Obama's prevarications on why he voted against the Born Alive Protection Act - read Obama Blocked the 'Born Alive Infant Protection Act' for further clarification on the matter.

As to why Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Act, Jill Stanek offers one plausible explanation:

I asked former state Sen. Patrick O'Malley why he thought Obama went so far. O'Malley introduced Born Alive and served with Obama on the Judiciary Committee both years the bill was argued there.

"I think he [Obama] was internally struggling with it," said O'Malley. "His dilemma was obvious. On one hand he holds himself out to be a constitutional scholar, and, of course, our Constitution makes clear that persons born are entitled to all the rights and privileges of full citizens. He consistently characterized the issue before us as being about abortion, but the legislation had nothing to do with Roe v. Wade. It focused on persons born alive. It was so easy to be on the right side of the angels here, but he wasn't."

...The federal version had passed the year before unanimously in the Senate and almost unanimously in the House. Even NARAL went neutral. Pro-aborts agreed to let it pass without a fight lest they appear extreme.

Except Obama. He decided to battle alone further left than any other senator – Boxer, Clinton, Kennedy, Kerry, et al. Risky. Odd.

I might have agreed with O'Malley that Obama fought his internal battle externally, realizing that to accept preterm live aborted babies as legal persons weakened his private justification of abortion.

But something in this scenario smelled. The first Mayor Daley once said, "There is nothing so wholesome as a fish," which was his way of defending Chicago politicians, who always smell fishy. Obama is one.

So with the new information out about Obama these days, I re-examined the evidence and found some interesting facts:

  • Obama has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago since 1988;

  • TUCC is a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice;

  • TUCC's pastor is Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whom Obama calls a spiritual adviser and whom Obama thanked in his 2004 U.S. Senate victory speech, along with "fellow Trinitarians," before his wife;

  • From 1986 to 1989, Wright served on the Board of Directors of Evangelical Health Systems;

  • In 1995, EHS merged with another health system to create Advocate Health Care, controlled jointly by the United Church of Christ and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, both pro-abortion;

  • One Advocate property is Christ Hospital, where in 1999 I discovered babies were being aborted alive;

  • One prominent Advocate board member is the Rev. Dr. Ozzie Smith Jr., a former associate pastor at TUCC under Wright;

  • Another Advocate board member, Melbalenia Evans, is TUCC's former executive minister;

  • TUCC is the United States' largest UCC church. Ebony listed Wright as one of the 15 greatest black preachers. Advocate is the largest nonprofit health-care provider in Chicago. Talk about crossroads of power and money. Speaking of crossroads, TUCC is located five miles from Christ Hospital.

So, which explanation makes more sense, that the fire rose in Obama's belly to fight for what he nobly but foolishly thought was the sacred right to infanticide....?

Or that Advocate got to Obama through its UCC contacts?

Source - World Net Daily

Or as Jill Stanek sums up in similar fashion here:

Obama hadn't been coached [to oppose the Born Alive Protection Act] had he, perhaps by fellow Trinity United Church of Christ member Dr. Jane Fisler-Hoffman, who also happened to sit on the board of Christ Hospital's parent company, Advocate Health Care?

Or by Rev. Dr. Ozzie Smith Jr., another Advocate board member and former associate pastor at TUCC under Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

Or by Wright himself, who sat on the board of Christ Hospital's parent company from 1986-89?

Or by Christ Hospital CEO Carole Schneider, a UCC member?

Or by fellow state Rep. Renee Kosel, a Christ Hospital board member who opposed Born Alive on the House side?

Or by Rev. Dr. Ozzie Smith Jr., another Advocate board member and former associate pastor at TUCC under Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

Or by Wright himself, who sat on the board of Christ Hospital's parent company from 1986-89?

Or by Christ Hospital CEO Carole Schneider, a UCC member?

Or by fellow state Rep. Renee Kosel, a Christ Hospital board member who opposed Born Alive on the House side?

Source - World Net Daily - "Barack Obama and the Comfort Room"

Perhaps, Jill Stanek is on to something. But for someone who's been dubbed "The most Liberal Senator in 2007", I'm not really surprised that Obama is the only Senator out there who opposes a born infant's right to live.

Regarding Obama's fondness for the "Comfort Room" where "Born Alive" infants are left to die "comfortably", Stanek writes:

Obama may have thought it impressive to wrap the baby one was killing in a blanket surrounded by silk flowers rather than leave him naked on a steel sink sideboard....The future presidential candidate was attempting to repackage liberal extremism to look comforting. Obama was pleased with a neonatal Soylent Green killing room, taking American liberal extremism to a new place.
A "new place" - and a horrifying one, indeed!

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