Obama’s Line in the Sand

Who can forget Barack Obama’s answer to Pastor Rick Warren when Warren asked him, “At what point does a baby get human rights?” Many were shocked when Obama said that “answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

Well, apparently Obama didn’t exactly come clean in the Warren interview because he had expounded on that issue at some length in the past. If you were shocked by his answer to Pastor Warren, you better be sitting down when you read this!

In 2001 and 2002, when Obama vehemently opposed Illinois legislation that would provide medical care to babies who accidently survived an abortion, he spoke on the Illinois Senate floor to give his “rationale” for his opposition. Here’s what he said in 2001:

“Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old-child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean – it would essentially bar abortion, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antibortion statute.”

In other words, even if a living, breathing baby survives an abortion and is completely delivered from the mother and if there is any question regarding whether the baby will survive, the abortion is not complete until the baby dies.

Many babies in a non-abortion context are prematurely born. On a personal note, one of my own sons was born two and one-half months early and required intensive medical care. Had it not been for the exceptional care he received, he could have died. Barack Obama, are you telling me that my son – now a brilliant college professor, husband and father – did not have rights as a human being because he was born early and his survival was in question?

Oh wait, I forgot. My son was a “wanted” child and the babies Obama is talking about about are not. Being wanted – as opposed to not being wanted – that, my friends, is the line in the sand that Barack Obama has drawn to determine which lives are worthy of living in this world.

Sue Armacost