Opinion

Barack Obama’s misplaced, blind faith in abortion doctors

Jill Stanek Pro-Life Activist
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President Obama is well known to have voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) four times between 2001 and 2003, when he was an Illinois state senator.

One of the two companion bills to BAIPA, which Obama also opposed, required that abortionists provide “reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice” to abortion survivors, and further, that abortionists try to anticipate botches and plan to have a second physician present if there was a “reasonable likelihood” that the abortion would result “in a live born child.”

Obama was the sole Illinois state senator to speak against Senate Bill 1663 on the Illinois Senate floor on April 4, 2002. He opposed it, he said, because he had full faith in abortionists:

[O]ne of the things … I expressed concern about, was what impact this would have with respect to the relationship between the doctor and the patient …

 

The only plausible rationale, to my mind, of this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor … (a) is going to make the wrong assessment, and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, or she made an error, and, in fact, that this was not a nonviable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that that physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical measures and practices that would be involved in saving that child.

 

Now, if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill make sense, but I … feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations and that, essentially, adding a — an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

 

Now, if that’s the case … that’s fine, but I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these are children who are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after.

Note Obama expressed concern that saving abortion survivors “might impact … the relationship between the doctor and the patient,” and that this legislation was “really designed to burden the original decision …”

Florida Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow expressed this same belief last month when testifying against her state’s proposed Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

When asked in a hearing, “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?” Snow responded, “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family and the physician.”

Nothing can be made of these statements other than that Obama and Planned Parenthood consider it an infringement on abortion rights to care for abortion survivors without permission from the mother and doctor — who were both invested in seeing that child dead.

Further, Obama apparently cannot fathom that an upstanding abortionist who had been paid to kill a baby wouldn’t turn around and try to save a viable baby’s life in the event of a botch.

Kermit Gosnell would have been one of the abortionists in which Obama had “confidence.” Most know by now Gosnell is on trial for murdering seven abortion survivors and one mother.

Gosnell was committing abortions in Pennsylvania at the very time this bill was being debated. Who knows, perhaps Gosnell was “snipping” the spinal cord of an abortion survivor at that moment. After all, the grand jury report stated he likely killed “hundreds” of abortion survivors during the three decades he was in business.

Barack Obama has stated on record that he stands with all abortion doctors — and that includes the Kermit Gosnells of America.

Jill Stanek is a former nurse and national speaker who currently blogs about pro-life issues at JillStanek.com.