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.