Obama: More pro-abortion than NARAL

by Francisco Gonzalez ~ August 23, 2008

Despite Obama’s efforts to publicly portray himself as a post-partisan, moderate bridge-builder, especially on social issues, his voting record illuminates the nature of his radical liberal beliefs. For example, as an Illinois state Senator, Obama voted against filtering pornography on elementary school library computers. In 2000, Obama voted “present” on a bill which would notify parents when their minor children seek an abortion. In addition, he twice voted against bills prohibiting the tax funding of abortions. He not only wants to keep abortion legal, but wants taxpayers to fund this controversial procedure that more than half of Americans equate to murder. In 2001, Barack Obama voted “present” on a bill to keep pornographic book stores, video stores, and strip clubs from setting up within 1,000 feet of schools and churches. In 2007, he said he would support voting for “sex education” for kindergarten children. Barack Obama also voted against a cloning ban in 2000 and touts the fact that he is an advocate for so-called “same-sex marriages.”

Most shockingly, not only does Obama support partial birth abortion, he voted against protecting babies who survive these late-term abortions. While Obama was still a state senator in Illinois, the United States Senate considered legislation to require that babies who survive abortion are cared for. In 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act passed the U.S. Senate without opposition. Not even Barbara Boxer, the U.S. Senate’s chief abortion advocate, opposed this bill. Around the same time, similar legislation was introduced in the Illinois State Senate. Did State Senator Barack Obama vote to protect these abortion-surviving children? Absolutely not. Apparently Barack Obama found nothing disturbing about an abortion procedure in which labor is induced to birth a child prematurely and then the baby is left to suffer and die without any care or attention. Furthermore, Obama refused to allow the Health and Human Services Committee that he chaired to even consider a later version of the bill.

Obama’s abortion position is so extreme that he is actually more pro-abortion than NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League). Even NARAL did not oppose the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. When the federal bill was being debated, NARAL released the following statement that said, “Consistent with our position last year, NARAL does not oppose the passage of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act … floor debate served to clarify the bill’s intent and assure us that it is not targeted at Roe v. Wade or a woman’s right to choose.” When Obama tries to take a centrist view of abortion in public, or seems to oppose some abortions, as he has already tried to do in his Presidential campaign, we must remember the facts of his radically pro-abortion voting record.

Obama has even promised Planned Parenthood that “he will not yield” on his pro-abortion position. “With one more vacancy on the [Supreme] Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe versus Wade and that is what is at stake in this election,” Obama told an audience at a Planned Parenthood conference on July 17, 2007. “I have worked on these issues for decades now,” he said. “I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional Law. Not simply as a case about privacy but as part of the broader struggle for women’s equality.”

Obama is clear: he has no intention to compromise his pro-abortion position. And with today’s news of his Vice Presidential pick, Joe Biden, it becomes even clearer that Obama is setting himself solidly in the pro-abortion camp. Biden made Roe v. Wade central to his opposition to Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts.