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Obama Spars With
Anti-Abortion Groups Over Illinois Senate Record
FOXNews.Tuesday, August 19, 2008. Barack Obama is sparring with
anti-abortion groups who have accused him of covering up his record in
the Illinois Senate on infant protection legislation.
Obama is pro-choice, but he told Pastor Rick Warren on Saturday during a
forum at Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., that he is in favor
of limits on late-term abortions provided exceptions are made for the
mother’s health.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee followed that forum with
an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network in which he said the
National Right to Life Committee was “lying” about his voting record in
the Illinois Senate.
The committee says Obama worked in the Illinois Senate to kill
legislation “virtually identical” to the federal Born-Alive Infants
Protection Act, which was intended to extend legal rights to an infant
born even after an attempted abortion.
“I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks
are lying,” Obama said in the interview. “I have said repeatedly that I
would have been … fully in support of the federal bill … that you should
provide assistance to any infant that was born — even if it was as a
consequence of an induced abortion.”
But he said that was not the bill presented at the state level. Obama
said that bill was trying to “undermine” Roe v. Wade and that the
Illinois Legislature already had a law in place to ensure life-saving
treatment is administered to infants.
“So for people to suggest that I … (am) somehow in favor of withholding
life saving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous. It defies
common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on
pushing this is offensive and it’s an example of the kind of politics
that we have to get beyond,” he told CBN.
The National Right to Life Committee, however, isn’t stepping back. It
released a statement Monday saying: “Senator Barack Obama’s four-year
effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect
born-alive survivors of abortions continues to unravel.”
Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council Action, also released
a statement calling for Obama to apologize to voters.
“Senator Obama’s position in the Illinois Senate was to oppose any
legislation that would protect such innocent life. Everyone else was
clear that the bill addressed infanticide not abortion,” he said,
accusing Obama of “twisting of the truth.”
Perkins claimed the campaign since clarified its position “that it was
the senator himself who was actually wrong on the facts.”
However, the campaign said it made no such statement.
Source: FoxNews.
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