Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News
August 27, 2012 (NationalRighttoLifeNews) – It’s hard to click on political news on the Internet and not be reminded that the Democratic Party is eager to make unlimited support for abortion the calling card for its national convention in North Carolina. Pro-abortion President Barack Obama believes the sharp contrast between himself and pro-life team of Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan will redound to his benefit.
National Right to Life surely agrees that the nation will have a clear choice come November. But NRLC believes the advantage pro-life presidential contestants have consistently enjoyed for decades will continue. Why?
For one important reason, because the electorate is closer in its views on abortion to the pro-life perspective than it is to the pro-abortion view. For another, because the intense focus on abortion over the last week is helping to bring to the surface what was almost entirely buried in 2008: just how extreme Obama has been on abortion-related issues – before he became President and since.
Put another way, there is the imaginary Obama middle-of-the-road record which the President wants to contrast with an equally fanciful caricature of the abortion records of Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan. But this will not stand, ironically because of all the massive attention focused on abortion.
This week NRLC has helped shine light on Obama’s record. One terrific source with links to important stories can be found here. What will you learn?
That like the details of so much of his life, Obama simply rewrote where he had stood on important state and federal legislation dealing with abortion. Here is just a sample.
Veteran pro-lifers are aware of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act which passed in 2002. But even many pro-lifers have only a vague understanding of how as an Illinois state Senator Obama three times opposed a very similar state bill to provide legal protection for babies who are born alive during abortions.
But there is so much more dirty laundry that needs to be aired. Take Obama’s support for the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act.” Misrepresented as a “codification of Roe v. Wade,” in fact had FOCA been enacted, it would have invalidated virtually all state and federal limits on abortion, and re-legalized partial-birth abortion. In other words, out with all those laws that enjoy widespread support.
How about more recently, in his role as President? It was like pulling teeth, but just before the House of Representatives voted on a bill to prohibit performing or coercing abortions to eliminate unborn babies of an undesired sex – almost always girls – we found out that the President opposed the measure.
So far: no protection for babies born alive during an abortion; support for the most radical pro-abortion bill ever (FOCA); and a willingness to oppose a law to ban sex-selection abortion! But thanks to a blanket of media indifference, who knows?
However, surely even President Obama would agree that to allow abortion for any reason or no reason until birth – the status of abortion in the District of Columbia – goes too far? When the House voted to replace that anything-goes policy with a ban on abortion after 20 weeks fetal age (the beginning of the sixth month), except to save the life of the mother, the President had a chance to voice an opinion.
He chose not to. There was one brief inquiry just before the vote and the reporter was told by the White House press secretary that he had not asked the president. And that was that.
ObamaCare funds abortion in many creative ways and makes rationing of medical care inevitable. Obama opposes the Hyde Amendment which has saved well over a million lives. The Obama HHS mandate forces religious institutions and businesses to pay for health insurance plans that cover medical procedures and drugs over their religious or moral convictions. And so on and so on and so on!
With all that to critically assess – Obama’s long-held support for positions only a tiny percentage of Americans support – NRLC quite correctly wrote, “The mainstream news media is again busy ginning up stories exploring the outer parameters of the abortion-related policy positions of pro-life Republican candidates, even where this involves remote, theoretical scenarios — while demonstrating a near-total disinterest in putting the spotlight on the outer parameters of the ‘abortion rights’ positions embraced by President Obama, even on matters under current legislative consideration.”
Be sure to go here. Once you read that release and the stories to which it links you will be equipped to help get the truth out that (as columnist Rich Lowry writes) “President Obama is an extremist on abortion. He has never supported any meaningful restriction on it, and never will.”
Reprinted with permission from NationalRighttoLifeNews