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Pro-lifers grapple with Obama
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The ballyhooing of Barack Obama’s cross-racial, trans-party appeal has become a deafening din and drafts even conservative Christians to its cause. Evangelicals debating whether to support him are grappling with one of the room’s several ideological elephants—abortion rights.
Many Christians who find the senator otherwise simpatico say they’re wondering if they can vote for an unflinchingly pro-abortion candidate? It’s true that recent setbacks in this department—like the fallout from Obama’s January Christianity Today interview, or the semi-anticipated release Wednesday of a July 2007 Planned Parenthood speech transcript, the text of which commits that, in the women’s rights fight, Obama “will not yield”—haven’t exactly allayed Christians’ doubts, even if John McCain still leaves some conservatives miffed.
Yet pundits in Texas, whose all-important primary is Tuesday, are quick to attribute record-setting voter numbers to disillusioned GOP crossovers who are voting for Obama, some to derail Hillary Clinton (Texas has an open primary), but many because they actually favor Obama. Reporting on the throngs of evangelical Obama supporters often misses the potential incongruence underlying it, failing to highlight what could be a deep tug-of-war between faith and politics.
Julie Lyons, a pro-life Democrat and former editor of the Village Voice Media-run alt weekly The Dallas Observer, decided to put that question straight to members of her church—a mostly black Pentecostal church at the apogee of Obama support. She asked, “Is abortion really that important?” She quotes a woman named Angela Braden as representative of the response. Braden concedes that Obama “may believe in legalized abortions,” but “he believes in giving the living what they need to live”—and that really makes him pro-life (which also hits on the growing criticism within the church that Christians spend too much time waging war on abortion and not enough decrying divorce or emphasizing adoption or helping the poor).
This is becoming a not-uncommon position in the Christian community. In a recent column, pro-life author Frank Schaeffer, son of evangelical heavyweight Francis Schaeffer, mirrors Braden’s thoughts exactly. He wrote at The Huffington Post that Obama “is actually pro-life” because he has a “world view that actually nurtures life. Obama is trying to lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated.”
A President Obama, Schaeffer argued, would build “a country in which all Americans are offered some sort of dignity and hopeful future”—that is “a place conducive to the kind of optimism each of us must hold in our hearts if we are to welcome children into this world.”
He contrasted this with Republicans, who are hypocritical in their pro-life ethic: “[T]hrough their puritanical war on sex education they’ve hindered our country from actually preventing unwanted pregnancy,” and the party’s “marriage to the greediest and most polluting earth-destroying corporations” has created “a climate (both moral and physical) that has scorched the earth for-profit, with no regard to future generations whatsoever.”
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Don?t blame racism
I would certainly prefer Obama to Clinton (of course, both have a long history of avid, even rabid, pro-abortion voting - so they are both bad on that issue - but Obama is a better person in other areas).
I would never vote for him against any likely GOP candidate I can think of, but he is preferable to Clinton. So GOP crossovers in a primary make perfect sense.
“Obama is trying to lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated.”
Through abortion?
I guess it makes sense to them. I understand that abortion is here to stay, and in many peoples minds the battle should be waged in educating the public on the truth about abortion, since education will bring about a decrease in numbers. That said, to call abortion celebrating life is strange and unexplainable to me.
He is a Harvard lawyer. Many in the bar–even those who are proAbortion–concede Roe exhibited poor legal reasoning and is thus “bad law”. Does Obama have any criticisms with Roe, esp in light of what we now know from neonatology and other breakthroughs in the OBGYN world??
The rabid anti Communist Dick Nixon was at last willing and able to meet Mao.
Maybe the only person who can confront the Democratic death culture will be this man whom the liberals otherwise deem unassailable.
But I wont hold my breath!
And to offer a panoply of feel-good social welfare programs yet at the same time champion the destruction of innocent human life? Not the candidate for this old boy.
Most black babies are aborted.
Julie Lyons is no longer editor of the Dallas Observer? Since when?
Evidently some of the potted plants and other objects Francis Schaeffer threw at his wife wound up hitting his son in the head.
“unflinchingly pro-abortion”
I know why you’re calling him that. It’s because he’s black, isn’t it. ISN’T IT??!!??!!
“… Obama “is actually pro-life” because he has a “world view that actually nurtures life. Obama is trying to lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated.”
I just don’t get it. You can’t say he’s actually pro-life when he is adamant on abortion. That’s one of the most unnurturing things imagineable.
I’m still fasting from political debate during Lent, but boy am I champin at the bit. I can’t wait until March 24 when my opinions on political issues will be resurrected.
KRM writes: “I would certainly prefer Obama to Clinton (of course, both have a long history of avid, even rabid, pro-abortion voting - so they are both bad on that issue - but Obama is a better person in other areas).”
Tell us why you think Obama is a better person and in what areas than Hillary?
Obama not only favors abortion, he is to the left of liberal Democrats on the issue of protecting infants born alive in the process of abortion
Rick Santorun in an article Obama: A Harsh Ideologue Hidden by a Feel-Good Image writes:
The act [Born Alive Infant Protexction Act] simply prohibited the killing of a baby born alive. To address the concerns of pro-choice lawmakers, the bill included language that said nothing “shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract any legal status or legal right” of the baby. In other words, the bill wasn’t intruding on Roe v. Wade.
Who would oppose a bill that said you couldn’t kill a baby who was born? Not Kennedy, Boxer or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not even the hard-core National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Obama, however, is another story. The year after the Born Alive Infants Protection Act became federal law in 2002, identical language was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee’s chairman, Obama, leading the opposition.
i.e. Obama, who claims to bringe non-partisan “change” to politics, has taken a radical position on this issue. Can anyone cite any position where he, like McCain, took a centrist position in order to compromise with the Republicans
The more one reads about Obama, the clearer it is clear that he is really a hard-edged liberal ideologue.
I think Peter Leavitt has hit on the way to defeat Obama if he becomes the nominee of the Democrats. Just keep bringing all this stuff up and make them defend “pro-abortion is pro-life” and all these other things they say that turn the real meaning of words upside down. Then ask how this is non-divisive, how this brings the country together.
Are liberals ever ashamed when things like this come out?
The warm, soothing notion that an Obama presidency would be more life-nurturing and supporting in the long run likely remains just that — a feeling based on how much folks want something to be the case. Without evidence that his policies would have this effect (or even of similar policies having such an effect in the past), I suspect those who enjoyed the initial gush of warmth at reaching this conclusion will be disappointed and embarrassed when the piss goes cold in their drawers. Sad drips.
Seriously, where is the evidence of policies he would support, the effectiveness of which would be measured by their ability to reduce the incidence of abortion? Becuase without this in place, the justification of a pro-choice candidate by pro-life voters as somehow vaguely “life-affirming” based on warm feelings and good intentions is so much intellectual incontinence.
Peter Leavitt at #10: Unfortunately, Rick Santorum, as he so often does, is lying about this.
The Illinois legislation that Obama opposed did NOT “simply [prohibit] the killing of a baby born alive.” It also define terms so broadly that it would have effective banned all abortions and, therefore, ultimately been shot down on Constitutional grounds at some point, in Obama’s opinion.
The language that Santorum quotes (”nothing shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract…” etc.) appears in the federal bill — not the Illinois bill — and Obama has said numerous times unequivocally that he would have voted for the federal bill if he had been in the Senate at the time.
No doubt you still disagree with his vote (actually, I do too). But at least disagree with it based on the truth of the matter.
NJLawyer at #11: Just keep bringing all this stuff up and make them defend “pro-abortion is pro-life” and all these other things they say that turn the real meaning of words upside down. Then ask how this is non-divisive, how this brings the country together.
I don’t think it’s possible to be non-divisive on this issue. The country is too split. No matter which position you take you’re going to differ with a large number of people.
The country is not split on “pro-abortion is pro-life” SteveG. They’ve just heard this one, and all it really is this black Pentecostal church’s lie to itself so that it can embrace a black candidate. What can you do when you’re a black Christian church opposed to abortion but you really want to vote for the black candidate? Redefine “pro-life.” In other words, lie and compromise.
I also don’t think you will get the majority of people in this country to go along with Obama that a baby who survives abortion isn’t a person. This isn’t hard. All it takes is common sense.
You can’t redefine divisiveness away.
You’re about to tell us about how Obama is going to end the divisiveness, right? Now’s a good time.
#10: Obama not only favors abortion
No one “favors” abortion. He favors a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body. Get it right.
The woman [Angela] “…Braden concedes that Obama “may believe in legalized abortions,” but “he believes in giving the living what they need to live”—and that really makes him pro-life…”
I expect this kind of dung-hill reasoning coming from the leftists and Marxists who make up the DemoRat Party these days. But to come from the mouth of a supposed Christian woman or Frankie Shaeffer boggles the mind.
They have left off all reason and absurdly pose the question as if it is a matter of life or death for them. If she was a Christian living in the Sudan I might believe her. No doubt she doesn’t have all that she wants or thinks that she should have (according to the leftists), but she has been led to abandon all sense of proportionality by the rhetorical, Marxist pandering of Barack Obama.
She will support Obama and the murder of children if he will give her an extra chicken in her pot. She is willing to sell her soul for a mess of pottage. Bravo! What a wonderful “Christian” woman.
I cannot even begin to address Shaeffer’s rationale. He has sunk beneath contempt.
VS - Obama is reputed by those who worked closely with him in the Illinois General Assembly (those whom I know and whose opinions I generally trust) - to be a pretty decent fellow. I don’t hear the same from those who’ve worked around her.
SteveG: Unfortunately, Rick Santorum, as he so often does, is lying about this.
What source do you have for this?
I found a corrobarating source for Santorum’s position at the Human Events website as follows
But Obama voted against this bill in the Illinois senate and killed it in committee. Twice, the Induced Infant Liability Act came up in the Judiciary Committee on which he served. At its first reading he voted “present.” At the second he voted “no.”
The bill was then referred to the senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, which Obama chaired after the Illinois Senate went Democratic in 2003. As chairman, he never called the bill up for a vote.
Jill Stanek, a registered delivery-ward nurse who was the prime mover behind the legislation after she witnessed aborted babies’ being born alive and left to die, testified twice before Obama in support of the Induced Infant Liability Act bills. She also testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Stanek told me her testimony “did not faze” Obama.
In the second hearing, Stanek said, “I brought pictures in and presented them to the committee of very premature babies from my neonatal resuscitation book from the American Pediatric Association, trying to show them unwanted babies were being cast aside. Babies the same age were being treated if they were wanted!”
“And those pictures didn’t faze him [Obama] at all,” she said.
At the end of the hearing, according to the official records of the Illinois State senate, Obama thanked Stanek for being “very clear and forthright,” but said his concern was that Stanek had suggested “doctors really don’t care about children who are being born with a reasonable prospect of life because they are so locked into their pro-abortion views that they would watch an infant that is viable die.” He told her, “That may be your assessment, and I don’t see any evidence of that. What we are doing here is to create one more burden on a woman and I can’t support that.”
As a senator, Obama has opposed measures to criminalize those who transport minors across state lines for the purpose of obtaining an abortion.
At a townhall meeting in Ottawa, Ill., Joanne Resendiz, a teacher and mother of five, asked him: “How are you going to vote on this, keeping in mind that 10, 15 years down the line your daughters, God forbid, could be transported across state lines?”
Obama said: “The decision generally is one that a woman should make.”
Note that Obama in this account says nothing about a constititutional issue. The burden is on you to prove otherwise with specific sources rather than vague ad hominem slurs.
Sure. Reference here.
The document linked to is a transcript of the Illinois General Assembly on March 31, 2001, and includes Obama’s statement. It is a PDF document so I can’t copy/paste it, but you can find his statement beginning on page 85, broken up by a comment from a Senator supporting the bill, and then Obama continues on page 86.
The summary is that he opposes the measure because he believes it would ne unconstitutional (and thereby involve the state in a losing court battle.)
During the course of it, he says, “And there was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster, with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately this bill goes a little bit further and so I just want to suggest, not that I think it’ll make too much difference with regard to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny.”
Incidentally, the bill passed with 34 voting aye, 6 nay and 12, including Obama, “present.”
His language is measured and not passionate, and from the print you can’t tell what his demeanor was, but I have no reason to doubt that his concern was NOT about denying care to such infants — as indeed he has stated several times that he would have voted for a bill to accomplish the same goal if he felt it would survive challenge.
#12 - Interesting thoughtful post SG.
And NJLawyer, you’re really on fire lately. I love it!
And RDean - YOU get it right. Once pregnant, there’s another body involved.
And the baby is saying “Get Your hands off my body!”
SG, thanks for the reference giving the official recored in which Obama claimed a simple interest in the constitutionality of the Illinois bill, as it encroached on Roe v. Wade.
At any rate, so what if stopping hospitals and abortion clinics from aborting babies alive and leaving them to die did theoretically encroach on Roe v. Wade. Obama was admitting he supported infanticide if that were true.
As far as I know, the Illinois that protected aborted live babies passed and was not overruled by a higher court.
The last sentence of #22 should read …the Illinois law.
Peter, the issue isn’t providing care for born-alive infants. Obama SUPPORTS that and has said so clearly. That’s a misleading claim.
The issue is getting a law that will stand. You can pass a law written in such a way that it does what you want to do, but gets struck down a few years later and then where are you? Right back where you started, with no protections for those babies, and you have to start all over again.
Or you can write the bill in such a way that it’s not going to be overturned, and then you have a permanent measure in place. The fact that 1/3 of the Illinois legislators voted no or “present” suggests they agree.
People want to use this to paint Obama as a barbarian who wants live babies to suffer and die, and that is just a lie. A pure, simple, bearing-false-witness lie. He stated in the transcript I linked to, and has said elsewhere, that it would have been possible to write a bill that accomplished the purpose without running afoul of the Constitution — the federal bill being an example — and he would have supported it.
(It amazes me that Christains violate that commandment without blinking and seem honestly puzzled as to why people object.)
As far as whether the law passed and has stood, I don’t know. But it wouldn’t be struck down on passage, it’d need to be challenged. It can’t have been in place more than a few years, so there hasn’t been a lot of time. Especially since the situation it covers can’t be all that frequent an occurrence. And if it’s been superseded by a superior federal law, it may be a non-issue now.
#21: And the baby is saying “Get Your hands off my body!”
It’s a fetus and it can’t talk.
Thanks, SteveG, for pointing out the truth of what Senator Obama supported. I too find it amazing that those who claim to oppose abortion are often revealed as tale-bearers.
Obama and his supporters on the abortion issue are liars, pure and simple. No amount of obfuscation, euphemisms, hand-wringing, crocodile tears, or political double-talk can disguise the fact that they favor the right of selfish mothers to kill their children in the womb. His voting record attests to that fact.
His supporters here on this thread engage in endless political quibbling, trying to paint over his pro-abortion position as concern for women’s rights, or concern over the constitutional viability of flawed bills, or concern that each child should feel wanted, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
If he was concerned that the Illinois bill in question would not pass a constitutional challenge, and if he was genuinely concerned about the suffering children, he would have worked with its supporters to craft a bill that would pass muster. After all, he claims to be candidate who can bring us together. If that is his big talent and one of the reasons we should elect him, why didn’t he do that in this case? What he does instead is to oppose every anti-abortion measure that he possibly can. He has absolutely no interest in the lives of unborn children or in working with those who care. His claims to the contrary are nothing but the standard leftist political lies.
The leftists on this site who are repeating those lies are not fooling anyone but themselves. You are like drug addicts, constantly giving yourselves rhetorical “fixes” so that you can feel better about the shameful positions you support. Obama has shown himself to be quite skilled in rhetorical “fixes” and so you flock to him like panting neighborhood junkies.
Michael Martin: Obama supports abortion rights. Nobody is trying to obfuscate that.
He does not support letting live-born babies die for lack of care. That is a lie. If you are comfortable with bearing false witness, then you go right ahead.
He did try to persuade the bill’s supporters to re-write it in a way that would stand up to challenge. He says so in his statement in the Assembly and no one speaks up to disagree. They refused … probably because they wanted a bill that would threaten abortion rights in general and that would be challenged, so they could fight the good public fight.
See, when that happens, the supporters could send out fund-raising letters talking about how they passed a law to protect innocent babies that “activist judges” were trying to overturn.
THEY, Michael, were playing politics with human life. Obama wanted a law that would hold up and refused to vote for one that wouldn’t.
This is how legislative records get distorted. Someone in Congress considers a bill that provides body armor for troops, but thinks it doesn’t include enough standards to be sure the armor is of good quality. It would make the soldiers feel better protected than they are and put them in greater danger, so he argues for stronger wording and if he can’t get it, votes against the bill. Next time he runs, his opponent says he voted against providing body armor for the soldiers.
You good Christians have no problem lying about people in this way. That is just as much a sin as gay sex. But there you are, calling evil good.
#25 - Fetus means “little one” -
A newborn baby isn’t able to “talk” either.
A 3-month old baby isn’t able to talk.
Etc.
And that’s why we all have to advocate for them.
SteveG He does not support letting live-born babies die for lack of care. That is a lie. If you are comfortable with bearing false witness, then you go right ahead. He did try to persuade the bill’s supporters to re-write it in a way that would stand up to challenge.
This is baloney. If Obama were serious about rewriting the bill he would have offered a formal amendment, which he didn’t do. The Illinois politicians knew exactly what Obama was up to in that he had collaborated with Planned Parenthood to defeat this bill as a matter of women’s rights.
You don’t have a leg to stand on with this issue on which Obama, the radical liberal fraudulently claiming to be the candidate for “change” is to the left of Kennedy, Boxer, and NARAL.
SteveG: “Obama supports abortion rights. Nobody is trying to obfuscate that.”
You just did. Your sentence should have read, “Obama supports murdering unborn children.”
That is the the awful truth which you now obfuscate with the euphemism “abortion rights.” That is also why you people are so afraid to view pictures of the hideous handiwork of your abortion mills. Such pictures are like what we saw coming out of places like Auswitch in 1945. But of course, it is much easier to make your case when you hide things like that and only speak of rights and fetuses and fake constitutional issues, etc.
Your whole case hase been based on lies from the very beginning. The principal in Roe v. Wade and her attorney’s lied from the start with her fabricated gang rape story. They committed perjury in order to gain the sympathy of the court and manufacture a constitutional “right” that never existed—a “right” that now gives Obama and his ilk legal cover to hide behind.
Don’t talk to me about lies. Your case is full of them.
SteveG:
Obama would have voted against it with or without his constitutional objection:
Unfortunately this bill goes a little bit further and so I just want to suggest, not that I think it’ll make too much difference with regard to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny
He would have voted against it even if he thought it would pass constitutional muster apparently because he thought it could be used to ban abortion.
He does not support letting live-born babies die for lack of care, but he won’t lift a finger to help them if doing so could possibly interfere with abortion. Which is ironic because obviously the abortion would have failed already. So his vote was an abortion started means abortion completed act.
Obama made an incredibly ignorant statement about abortion in SteveG’s post 20 link (page 87, the quote above is from page 86):
Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can take place.
I wouldn’t put much effort into determining Obama’s abortion position based on this non-vote. He actually thought abortions after viability were not allowed. He is, or was, a creature of the party and voted accordingly.
Amphipolis:
He would have voted against it even if he thought it would pass constitutional muster apparently because he thought it could be used to ban abortion.
No, you don’t understand. The fact that it could, in his opinion, be read so as to ban all abortion was precisely why he thought it wouldn’t hold up under challenge.
I repeat my question from earlier, which nobody answered: Would it make more sense to vote for a bill that sounds more sweepingly “pro-life” but which is probably not going to survive the appeals process … or one that is less encompassing but also more likely to stay in effect?
not that I think it’ll make too much difference with regard to how we vote
Obama said that the constitutional issue would not make a difference in how they voted. That’s what he said. Otherwise, what did he mean?
Not that it matters since he was misinformed on what the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution was on the issue he was (not) voting on.
The bottom line is that they want women to have an unlimited right to kill their own children. Any restriction to this right is unacceptable because it could be used to justify taking the right away from others. Life has nothing to do with it, it is all choice. This is Obama’s position.
#15:…all it really is this black Pentecostal church’s lie to itself so that it can embrace a black candidate.
Bingo.
Amphipolis at #37: Obama said that the constitutional issue would not make a difference in how they voted. That’s what he said. Otherwise, what did he mean?
I think he meant that the people who were going to vote for it rather than take the time to rewrite it to make it Constitutional would vote that way no matter what he said.
What do you think he meant?
Not that it matters since he was misinformed on what the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution was on the issue he was (not) voting on.
Perhaps he was, but nevertheless, that was his reason. He said repeatedly that he would have voted for a bill to protect the born-alive infants if he believed it would hold up. He said he would have voted for a federal bill that passed Congress before he was elected to the Senate, because it was well-written and avoided what he believed would be a Constitutional roadblock.
You keep insisting that you know his “real” motives or whatever, but his own statements don’t jibe with what you think.
He is not an anti-abortion candidate and nobody is trying to pretend he is. But neither is he the heartless barbarian that you seem to want to believe he is.
His use of the word we instead of you would indicate that he didn’t think any of them would change their votes if the bill was changed or not. He said that he voted against it because he thought it could possibly be used to restrict abortion, not just because of constitutional considerations. I take him at his word, with due allowance for demonstrable ignorance and party loyalty. I frankly think he didn’t put much thought into those statements, which is pretty lame.
He was willing to not protect real live-born babies because he thought doing so might possibly have been used to restrict the killing of pre-born babies some day in the future. Read what he wrote. You can judge for yourself whether that is barbaric. I think it is a natural consequence of denying when human life obviously begins.