Obama votes against abortion survivors

There is a bill called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that guarantees that any infant born alive at any stage of development will be afforded the FULL RIGHTS of a human being. This includes receiving any medical attention necessary for survival. While this may seem like an obvious fact to make into a law, apparently there were cases of babies actually surviving abortions and not being afforded these rights. Some hospitals have a policy that if a baby is born with zero chance of survival (For example, before 22 weeks gestation, or with severe, untreatable fatal abnormalities) they will provide "comfort care," keeping the baby warm and fed until it dies naturally, usually within hours. Well, apparently there were hospitals that were applying this "comfort care only" policy to babies who survived abortions, even if the baby had no birth defects and had a chance of survival, albeit with the expected risks of being born prematurely due to a forced labor in an attempt to abort the pregnancy. Under this law, if a child is fully born for any reason (even a botched abortion) killing it is murder.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Terence Jeffrey.


When Obama was in the Illinois Senate, the Born Alive Infants bill came up three successive years.

In 2001, three bills were proposed to help babies who survived induced labor abortions. One, like the federal Born Alive Infants bill, simply said a living "homo sapiens" wholly emerged from his mother should be treated as a "'person,' 'human being,' 'child' and 'individual.'"

On all three bills, Obama voted "present," effectively the same as a "no." Defining "a pre-viable fetus" that survived an abortion as a "person" or "child," he argued, "would essentially bar abortions, because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute."