Politics

Did President Obama Support Infanticide?

In last week’s GOP debate, Newt Gingrich claimed that President Obama supported infanticide as an Illinois state senator. Here is the charge in Gingrich’s own words:

You did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. If we’re going to have a debate about who is the extremist on these issues, it is President Obama, who, as a state senator, voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.

There are two key claims here: (1) that President Obama supported infanticide, and (2) that the media virtually ignored it in his run for president in 2008. Patrick Brennan has done a fact check on Gingrich’s claim and has basically confirmed that Gingrich’s statement was accurate. Brennan writes:

Obama’s record as a state senator was not merely pro-choice, but radically pro-abortion. His voting record indicates that he does not believe infants deserve protection even once they have emerged from the womb if they are deemed to be below the age of viability, and he did in fact, three times, vote to keep a form of infanticide legal.

Brennan documents this conclusion in the rest of the article which you can read here. Interestingly, even Rick Santorum wrote an Op-Ed back in 2008 trying to expose Obama’s record on this topic.

The President’s extreme pro-abortion views were well-known before he was elected in 2008. Indeed, I wrote about it numerous times on this blog in 2008. The reason that most people don’t know about this is that the press gave him a pass on this issue in 2008.

Maybe with all the talk of contraception this cycle, the press will finally give his infanticide votes a little more scrutiny. I’m not holding my breath for that one.

5 Comments

  • PuritanD71

    Denny,

    It does make one wonder if the media did not mind overlooking such a serious issue what else will they overlook this election cycle to assist Pres. Obama with his desire for a second term.

    I do wonder if our social media of the day will be able to help alleviate such a discrepancy.

  • Derek

    There’s a very disturbing back story to this that wasn’t even covered in the NRO story. There was a nurse named Jill Stanek who LITERALLY discovered a dying baby in a soiled linen closet at Christ Hospital (near Chicago), of all places. She was so horrified that she immediately brought it to the attention of her supervisors. She found out that the baby was part of a botched abortion attempt. Rather than trying to save the baby once it was out of the womb and alive, the doctors instead left the baby to die in the soiled linen closet.

    Stanek then took this information to the hospital administrators, who basically told her to be quiet. This outraged her and she took it to the newsmedia and it got mild coverage, mainly in Christian radio. She was fired for doing this. The doctor was not disciplined because it turns out that this is rather standard operating procedure when a doctor deems that a mother’s mental or physical health would be jeopardized by keeping the baby alive.

    This whole episode played a major role in getting support in Illinois and other states to pass a “born alive protection” bill. Which State Senator Obama played a central role in defeating.

    In fact, this is how many of us in Illinois came to find out who Obama is, years before he even became a U.S. Senator.

    Thanks for talking about this Denny. The story I just told is a true one that I wish more Americans would learn about.

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