IT IS A MALICIOUS LIE THAT
OBAMA SUPPORTS INFANTICIDE
by Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University
of Idaho (nickgier@roadrunner.com)
For some
time a malicious lie has been spreading that
Obama supports infanticide. Quite to the contrary, Obama simply wanted Illinois
to enforce its law against infanticide if it indeed had happened. It
all started in a Chicago hospital
where there were reports that nurses left fetuses that survived abortion to die.
The Illinois Department of Public Health, however, could find
no proof of this. It reported that "the allegation that infants
were allowed to expire in a utility room could not be substantiated, and all
staff interviewed denied that any infant was ever left alone."
Some
Illinois legislators overacted to these allegations, and they tried to pass a
poorly worded bill that would have given any fetus born alive the status of a
person. Obama and his Democratic colleagues objected
to the bill and it died in his senate committee. The
Illinois Medical Society supported Obama in killing this unnecessary piece of
legislation.
In opposing the bill, Obama's main concern was that it was
unconstitutional and that it undermined Roe v. Wade.
Obama also argued that the bill was unnecessary because "existing Illinois law
already requires doctors to provide medical care in
the very rare case that babies are born alive during abortions." The
Illinois Attorney General backed up Obama by ruling that the act described in
the bill was already a crime in Illinois.
Later Obama said that he would have supported the federal version of this
bill, because it did not have any language granting personhood to the early
fetus and thereby undermining a woman's right to choose.
Pro-choice
policies coupled with solid sex education programs have reduced abortion rates
to 11 per 1,000 European mothers, while American and Latin American rates are 26
and 37 per 1,000 respectively.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute (www.guttmacher.org)
has estimated that 4 million illegal abortions are performed in Latin America
each year, and approximately 800,000 women are hospitalized because of
complications resulting from unsafe techniques. It is estimated that 1,500
Mexican women die each year because of clandestine abortions.
The Guttmacher report has made a list of the techniques
Latin American women use because they are not offered safe, legal abortions.
These desperate women take caustic substances orally and vaginally, or they
insert rubber tubes (sometimes with toxic fluids), wires, knitting needles, or
just sticks.
The road to
fewer and safer abortions is clear. We can reject abstinence programs that don't
work (even in Palin's own evangelical family), ramp up our sex education
programs, and remove all obstacles to a woman's right to choose during the first
two trimesters.
At
least Latin American countries allow abortions in the
case of rape or incest, but the GOP
Party platform does not allow these exceptions. If a
McCain/Palin administration still pushes abstinence and
appoints judges who overturn Roe v. Wade,
then the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrial world will only increase
and America's expectant mothers will be put at great risk.