I saw this on Life News. You can read the whole thing there.
New Audio Surfaces of Obama Defending Infanticide in Illinois
That President Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois legislature to not support a bill to provide medical care for newborns who survived failed late-term abortions is one of the key reasons pro-life voters will never support him.
Now, Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack has uncovered new audio of Obama, as a state legislator in Illinois in 2003, defending his position. Obama essentially argues that there is no need for the law because he trusts abortion practitioners to provide medical care for the baby they unsuccessfully tried to kill in an abortion.
The transcript of the video McCormack unearthed follows:
OBAMA: I just want to be clear because I think this was the source of the objections of the Medical Society. As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child – however way you want to describe it – is now outside the mother’s womb [fetus outside the womb… whatever you want to call it. What do you want to call it? In any event, there is audio, below. When you hear him say this, the impact is clearer. And the whole thing is chilling.] and the doctor continues to think that its nonviable but there’s, lets say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just out limp and dead, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. Is that correct?
[…]
But WAIT! There’s MORE!
Note how he blathers on and on, even as he does now.
[wp_youtube]YUkbuhXzbvI[/wp_youtube]
Pres. Obama has supported infanticide.
Pure barbarism.
Monstrous. He has not a drop of empathy for an injured, precious, defenseless little baby. To him, a baby is an “it”.
It sounds like a clarifying question, not an argument, to me. But I agree the choice of words Mr Obama has here is troubling. I assume–or I should say that I really hope–there’s somewhere in that hearing transcript a good bit of discussion of what “non-viable” means and how that differs from injured or disabled.
That made me sick to my stomach
“Catholics for Obama” recently decided to set aside the abortion dilemma and instead concentrate on the social justice issues. They then claim that Obama is more pro-life than Romney! It simply amazes me that this group could compartmentalize and ignore a horrific act such as abortion to justify their support of liberalism. It frightens me to peek inside their sick minds. God have mercy on us!
As much as I do not support Obama, I just get the sense that he was just worried about the abortionist’s bottom line (profits) and burden of “unnecessary” government regulation. Ironic, isn’t it? If only he was as concerned for anyone else’s businesses.
What a crazy world. Pure evil is defended on the basis of semantical side-stepping …
Pure evil. No faithful Catholic can vote for this man.
Chilling. How any Catholic can bring herself to vote for this man, I can’t imagine.
It’s crazy that this man wouldn’t want his daughters to be “punished with a baby”, but wouldn’t have any problem with a grandchild being punished with death by abortion or slow death in a pan after a botched abortion for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time- his own daughter’s womb. The mind that can justify that kind of logic has to be either crazy or evil.
Abortion is to women’s health as slavery is to a jobs program.
It is disgusting to listen to this. Of course it is about clarifying an important issue of the bill, and the O-man has clearly identified the matter: whether it is up to the abortionist to decide if his own “procedure” or “diagnose” was erroneous or if this should be decided by an independent physician. It is obvious – and has happened – that many abortionists will tend to hide their “errors”, rather than risking any liability. The O-man and his followers certainly know this, otherwise they are as dumb as they are demonic and evil. Speaking of confidence in abortionists to provide medical care to “a fetus outside the mother’s womb” is nothing else than cynical.
Tim has been aborted in 1997, unexpectedly came out of the mother’s womb living, was left to die in a cold room, unattended, without medical help for nine hours until he was finally provided the help he needed to survive the barbarian act. He is still living, but suffers from the damage caused by his abortion and the lack of treatment thereafter.
http://www.tim-lebt.de/en/homepage/
And a good thing no priests will be voting for him…
PostCatholic, it might sound as if Sen. Obama was trying to clarify the issue, but the record shows that he voted against this bill 4 separate times. When confronted with these votes, he claimed that he would have voted for the bill if it had contained “Roe-neutral” language that would protect the abortionist (such language was in the federal bill). But Illinois senate records show that the 4th time the bill came to the floor, it had been amended with the neutrality language, and he STILL voted against it. He was the only person in the Illinois senate who rose to argue against this bill. After voting present for most of his legislative career, he finally found a principle he thought was worth fighting for: the proposition that babies who survive abortions can be lawfully denied medical care.
This is not just your president, but the leader of the free world.
And of the colonial power rewriting the Kenyan constitution, Philipine law…
Please convince your fellowvoters!
This came up during the 2008 televised debate and Obama dismissed it without a slightest challenge from his opponents by saying that such protection (of infants born alive after an attempted abortion) already existed. There was not a beep to challenge him from anyone. McCain stood there and didn’t say anything meaningful.
Andrew, by 2008, Obama had been denying this story vociferously for several years. I don’t think the voting records or the audio had been made public at that point. And of course, McCain is the fellow who reassured us all that we had “nothing to fear from Mr. Obama”.
evil.
Will this get any airtime on TV?
“I don’t think the voting records or the audio had been made public at that point.”
Illinois General Assembly voting records and floor debate transcripts are ALWAYS public, and they have been available online for years at http://www.ilga.gov. Transcripts may take a while (sometimes several months) to complete, but transcripts from 2004 were certainly completed by 2007 or 2008. If you know the bill number and the date or approximate date of the floor debate it shouldn’t be that hard to find.
As for audio, I know that I can call up the Illinois House or Senate office and request recordings of the floor debate on any recent bill if transcripts are not yet available (they burn it onto a CD for you). I have done so several times. I do, however, work for a legislative agency so I probably get quicker service than a member of the general public would receive. I don’t know how far back the audio recordings go; it’s possible that recordings from 2004 and earlier have been converted to some kind of new digital format since then.
All that said, I think the problem is not that Obama’s voting record on this issue wasn’t “made public” but that the mainstream media ignored or downplayed its significance, for obvious reasons.
Thanks for the correction, bookworm. I suppose if one knows what one is looking for one could find it. That might not be the same thing as this information being widely known to the public at the time.
” . . . this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births . . . “ Mr. Obama, 2003
He was right about that. The legislation was in fact proposed for the purpose of curtailing therapeutic abortions. So, technically, he was correct on that point. As is often the case the stated intent of the bill and the practical implications of the bill were not quite exactly the same. And that’s fine, that’s the way the game is played on all sides.
So what this is about is that Mr. Obama, back in 2003, opposed a back-door proposal to curtail elective therapeutic abortions. But we already know that Mr. Obama is pro-choice. So there is really no new information here. The bill itself was a red herring and everyone at the time (nine years ago) knew it.
De facto we have people in this country who are pro-choice and people in this country who are not. This has been the case for a long time, and will be for the foreseeable future.
What I keep coming back to is that we have to understand the nature of political discourse. This is where, in all due respect, Cardinal Burke fails. We can’t take any politicians at their word, including those on the right, who pandering to their anti-abortion voters spew anti-choice rhetoric.
If we oppose therapeutic abortion, which I assume everyone here does, we need to be concerned about the actual abortion rate. There is absolutely no reason to believe that under an unlikely Romney presidency the abortion rate would recede.
I know that the response here is that, “but we can’t vote for people who say that they are pro-choice,” but in fact there is no reason to believe that those who protest that they are anti-choice have the actual willingness or ability to do anything to change the status quo.
It is an error to take politicians on the right at their word while ascribing all kinds of vile agendas to politicians on the left. Political discourse at it best is replete with dissemblance an all sides. To steal a phrase from John Nance Garner, political discourse is worth little more than a warm bucket of spit.
So it all keeps taking me back to what really matters, which is the actual rate of horrible and immoral therapeutic abortions. In actual fact (I really hate that redundancy but what the heck, I’m using it here) I think there would be fewer therapeutic abortions under the continuance of Obama/Biden and perchance Clinton/X for the next twelve years than under eight years of Romney/Ryan. Although my personal opinion would be that in the unlikely event of a Romney/Ryan first term the economy would be in such horrible condition that there would never be a second term.
So I would argue that the only valid arguments are around the actual prospective therapeutic abortion rate and all the rest is . . . well, what Garner said.
an = on
Darn, I tried for no typos on that post!
Therapeutic abortion.
Humph.
Creep.
@frjim4321 :
1. I think it’s reasonable to assume that Romney would appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court if he had the chance. That’s something.
2. Our concern is not only with the actual abortion rate, but also with whether we are doing everything we can to eradicate abortion 100% (which means electing pro-life civil leaders) AND with whether we appear to be giving consent to immoral practices or opinions. The fact is that people who support legal abortion simply should not be allowed to govern any country.
We can’t be content with only limiting abortion; it must never be allowed. It’s clear that questionable ideas like “therapeutic abortion rates would be higher under X candidate than Y candidate” do not take precedence over the necessity to vote pro-life.
In case anyone is thinking “how do you know that Romney is really pro-life?”: We can only do the best we can with the information we have. We can’t just shut down because we don’t have a way to authenticate 100% everything someone says. Besides, we should give everyone – and that means politicians too – the benefit of the doubt. “Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it.” – St. Ignatius (see Catechism 2478).
Hmmm, it would seem to me that the actual abortion rate would include all actual abortions that actually happen. The motivation behind the abortion does not change the procedure or outcome- dead babies, broken women, and killer doctors. Just as there is no “good” genocide, there is no “good” abortion.
frjim is just tweaking everyone. After getting the outraged to go off pop, he will innocently explain that “therapeutic abortion” is simply the technical medical term, in contrast to “spontaneous abortion” i.e. miscarriage.
I prefer “induced abortion” as the correct medical term, as it doesn’t suggest that it is a legitimate therapeutic practice.
But the use of not only this loaded language but other similar advocacy language (e.g. “pro-choice”) by a priest disturbs me greatly. Not to mention looking under every rock for excuses to support the most pro-abortion president in history, and setting up a completely unverifiable and unpredictable standard to justify his position. . . a future hypothetical change in “abortion rate”.
If you make your litmus test sufficiently vague and unpredictable, you need never come face to face with the reality of what and who you are supporting.
After getting the outraged to go off pop, he will innocently explain that “therapeutic abortion” is simply the technical medical term, in contrast to “spontaneous abortion” i.e. miscarriage.
I prefer “induced abortion” as the correct medical term, as it doesn’t suggest that it is a legitimate therapeutic practice. AMA
That’s fine, “induced” works as well, in fact I easily could have used that term instead. No harm, no foul.
But the use of not only this loaded language but other similar advocacy language (e.g. “pro-choice”) by a priest disturbs me greatly.
But that language is more accurate. If it is “loaded” than the loading is being applied by others. In fact, it’s very much about choice because the significant moral distinction between “induced” and “spontaneous” abortions is in fact the element of election.
This is very much about the term “pro-life” that is often applied to those who oppose induced abortion but not not oppose many other life-related things such as the more rare capital punishment. The “pro-life” tag in my mind would related to one’s stance with respect to a consistent ethic of life.
So, I use the terms advisedly and not because I am advocating for one group or the other.
We can’t be content with only limiting abortion; it must never be allowed. Amandil
I can see the point here but in the real word it’s important to be practical. I don’t think an all-or-nothing approach gets us anywhere with this.
FrJim4321 says,
This is very much about the term “pro-life” that is often applied to those who oppose induced abortion but not not oppose many other life-related things such as the more rare capital punishment. The “pro-life” tag in my mind would related to one’s stance with respect to a consistent ethic of life.
I don’t much care for either “pro-choice” or “pro life”–they are phrases intended for political consumption, presumably without chewing. Pro or Anti Abortion correctly express the positions.
Did you ever see this Creative Minority Report video from 4 years ago? Stunningly chilling. It needs to go viral, now more than ever. Maybe Father Z’s readers can help it to do so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HRFqmlZEbY
We are quite certain that whether it is spewed rhetorically in opposition, or opposed quietly with a shaken head and within the voting booth, that, as Mr. Lincoln said, “If slavery isn’t wrong, nothing is wrong.”
How about this as a place to start the end of abortion? I am pretty sure that under a Romney administration tax-payer funding to Planned Parenthood will be cut off – several states have already done so. However, the baby-killer-in chief has sent the money anyway, I don’t know how he gets away with that. Next I would think that the funds going all over the globe through UN programs for population control will be cut off as well. How about that as a place to start? Stop using my money and yours to kill babies. I’m pretty sure there will be less abortion if no one is gonna help pay for it.
FrJim4321 says, “This is very much about the term “pro-life” that is often applied to those who oppose induced abortion but not oppose many other life-related things such as the more rare capital punishment. The “pro-life” tag in my mind would related to one’s stance with respect to a consistent ethic of life.”
Our Holy Father does not agree with the equivalence you attempt to draw, Fr. Jim. He says: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia….there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” Abortion is the prime issue of our time; without life itself, no other quality of life issue comes into play. You are supporting a regime that murders children and calls it “a blessing”. The party of death has sunk to a level of depravity heretofore unseen in our country. I pray your eyes will be opened, Father.
How about this as a place to start the end of abortion? I am pretty sure that under a Romney administration tax-payer funding to Planned Parenthood will be cut off
In Massachusetts, where I live, Romney signed the bill establishing RomneyCare. It requires all health insurance policies subsidzed by the state to include coverage for abortion and reserves a seat for Planned Parenthood on a policy advisory board.
http://massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/health_ins/
jjhayes, Thank you for the link. I don’t like the sound of that. But, I have to believe that with all the pro-life organizations who are backing and endorsing Romney/Ryan this time around that their feet will be held to the fire. I believe it, with all my heart. One of the first things our present baby-killer in-chief did when he took office was to reverse the Mexico City policy which had prevented any US funding for abortion anywhere in the world. Romney/Ryan will reinstate it and will de-fund Planned Parenthood. I believe it with all my heart.
Father Jim
I like to think that I follow a consistent ethic of life in that I oppose the deliberate taking of human life at any stage for any reason other than valid self-defense. While I have real difficulty supporting either political party, the stark numbers do not lie. We are sickened by the notion that an innocent man can be put to death by the state and rightfully so. However, one of the reasons we even stop to think about such a possibility is because we have a face and a name to place with a death-row prisoner. We have no such information about the countless numbers of human lives that have been taken by abortion. Not long ago I saw the statistics on the number of abortions performed in New York City alone. They clearly demonstrate that in the Big Apple, abortion is anything but rare as 2 out of every 5 pregnancies ends in abortion. If you took all the American lives lost in wars and due to the death penalty since the foundation of this country, it would not even approach the number of babies torn from the womb.
I believe it was Blessed Mother Teresa who said: “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish”. So long as Catholics continue to equate other ills with the intrinsic evil of abortion, this abomination will continue and I truly believe that God will ask us to account for this. I know how I want to be able to answer Him. Please, think about this. Not only do you have your own soul to account for but those you shepherd. I take it that those closest to you know your political leanings. Imagine the impact you can have by acknowledging that the right to be born trumps all others and that you will no longer support any candidate who is more interested in protecting abortionists than the most vulnerable among us – the unborn.
If I have made assumptions about your political inclinations that are mistaken, I beg your pardon. I am simply basing my remarks on the impression that your comments here have left me. God bless.
AAM –
Whenever I read any of Fr. Jim4321’s responses, it makes me want to post a Troll Alert!
nc
frjim4321
I think you are wrong in your conclusion because pointing out the horror of infanticide is an effective way of challenging the pro abortion position. (Even though it makes me want to puke to think that one might have to engage in semantics and political strategies in the face of such horrendous crimes. Imagine having to “explain” the evil of the WWII concentration camps and having to engage in political discourse with defenders of the holocaust.) At some point even the most liberal catholics should manage to be scandalized. If infanticide doesn’t move one to reject a candidate I don’t know what will?
nanetteclaret says:
Whenever I read any of Fr. Jim4321?s responses, it makes me want to post a Troll Alert!
It makes me realize that there needs to be a reform of the seminaries. Fr Jim is lost in an existential fog, a typical product of the American seminaries of the 25 years after VatII. The fog rolled in with the compliments of the likes of Rahner and Schillebeeckx.
FrJim: The intrinsic evil of abortion is not the moral equivalent of capital punishment, which is allowed in Catholic moral teaching (CCC #2267). Second point, according to the CDC, there were 825,564 legally induced abortions in 2008; those killed in US by capital punishment in 2008: 37. Let’s worry about the elephant in the room not this feckless “seamless garment” argument.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf
Here’s a clip of Obama’s pre-election interview in 2008 with Pastor Rick Warren. Obama stumbles around . . . hesitates to say “pro-life”, admits he’s pro-abortion and implies he wants to facilitate use of contraceptives with federal funding. Two grave evils, mortal sins. How can any Catholic vote for him in good conscience?
http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=JBE0JJNU
acardnal: I think the “seamless garment” is a threadbare rag catholics use to rationalize their continued support of Democrats. I notice that Fr. Jim complains about “semantics” and the term “pro-life” when the issue is abortion, but let the topic of same-sex relationships come up and he’s anxious to tell us all about “civil rights” and “marriage rights” and other silly euphemisms for unnatural behavior.
Obama had no mother, no father, no family, no country. He belonged to whoever he was deposited with. He had to know his un-wantedness. That changes you for good or bad.
Damaged goods is what we got have here. Lipstick on a pig wasn’t that his favorite phrase in 2008?
Sissy the references you mention aren’t actually silly euphemisms. Frankly, they’re evil lies, an important distinction. They sound harmless, and probably reasonable which is in part what makes them evil. Sound extreme doesn’t it? But marriage is a sacrament; it has never been a right. To change it’s definition is not ever possible, and to start speaking about it as a right is sophistry on the part of those who in fact wish to change it.
Below, an excerpt from a column by Scott Richert as per acardinal’s well put statement about “the elephant in the room ….(and the) feckless “seamless garment” argument.” :
“Rather than elevating the Church’s teaching on other social issues to the severity of her teaching on abortion, voters used the seamless garment as an excuse to quit considering abortion when they entered the voting booth.” ( My thought: which is bad enough, worse when they don cassocks)
“..From a Jan 25 2009 ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Nancy Pelosi explained that some of that cost-cutting will come at the expense of the unborn. Discussing President Obama’s economic stimulus package, Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi, ‘Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?’
Her answer was enlightening:
‘Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.’
In other words, the federal government can help the states “reduce costs” by, in the words of Charles Dickens’ Scrooge, reducing the “surplus population.” For Pelosi, a Catholic who dissents from the Church’s teaching on abortion and contraception, this is not a hard choice.
When Stephanopoulos responded to her remark by saying, ‘So no apologies for that?’ Pelosi replied:
‘No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, some of the initiatives you just mentioned.’
We can debate whether Cardinal Bernardin was right or wrong in formulating the seamless-garment approach, but this much we know: He did not intend for it to be used to justify balancing the federal budget on the backs of the unborn.
Yet today, and for the foreseeable future, that is the practical effect of Catholic votes for Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and other pro-abortion politicians. Why would we expect that those, like Pelosi and Obama, who have made their peace with the destruction of unborn human life are going to be more serious about any other social issue?
When we reduce abortion to a nonissue in order to elevate other areas with which Catholics are concerned, the poor and defenseless suffer.
And there’s nothing Catholic about that.”
cyejbv, I agree with every word you wrote. I was pointing out Fr. Jim’s inconsistencies in his own political views, and I hate to come down on him too hard (I believe he is uninformed and misguided rather than malicious). But your characterization is accurate.
nanetteclaret says:
“Whenever I read any of Fr. Jim4321?s responses, it makes me want to post a Troll Alert!”
A troll pretending to be a Priest.