---

Alan Keyes Comes out Swinging on Abortion as Illinois Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Illinois, August 10, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Alan Keyes, former Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency in 1996 and 2000, and American ambassador to the U.N., accepted the Republican invitation to run for U.S. Senate for the state of Illinois Sunday. Keyes faces Barack Obama in the bid to replace retiring Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald in November's election.

Keyes, an ardently pro-life Catholic, began his acceptance speech with "Praise God!" Keyes described the many policy differences between himself and opponent Obama, including such things as taxation, gun control and school choice. "What finally caught my eye, however," he said, ". . . was when I learned that [Obama] had actually, in April, 2002, apparently cast a vote that would continue to allow live birth abortions in the state of Illinois."

"I hope everyone here will understand what I'm talking about," Keyes explained. "We are talking about a situation in which, in the course of an abortion procedure, a child has been born alive - is out of the womb, breathing and living on its own - and he cast a vote against the idea that we should not stand by and let that child die!"

Obama also voted against the partial birth abortion ban. "Barack Obama is somebody, for instance, who on abortion takes a stand that turns its back on the principles on the basis of which slavery was abolished, the principles on the basis of which Martin Luther King argued against segregation," Keyes said.

Keyes said he was running to uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence, "And I am doing it on behalf of Illinoisans who deeply believe that we should not abandon those principles, on abortion, on our respect for traditional marriage, on our respect for true self-government as the basis of our approach to education and to our economy."

Later, in an interview with CNN, Keyes defended his opposition to same-sex "marriage" -- "We as human beings cannot assert that our sexual desires cannot be controlled," he said, in response to the interviewers assertion that sexual orientation is genetically determined. That view would "consign us to the real of instinctual animal nature and we are not there," he said.

Read Keyes' acceptance speech:
http://illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=18409

See Keyes' CNN interview Monday: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/09/keyes.illinois/

See Keyes' interview on the Sean Hannity Show: http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/media/interviews/04_08_09hannity.htm

tv

 Back to Top

---

MORE NEWS: LifeSiteNews.com Home Page  Last 10 Days   Archives   Special Reports

Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.