NRLC addresses Obama’s distortions on “born alive” law
The National Right to Life Committee addresses spin from the Obama campaign regarding Obama’s opposition to legislation banning infanticide:
Assertion: The BAIPA was unnecessary, because "Illinois law already stated that in the unlikely case that an abortion would cause a live birth, a doctor should ‘provide immediate medical care for any child born alive as a result of the abortion.’ (August 19, 2008, Obama campaign document)
Response: Obama explained in 2001, and has never recanted, that he opposed the Illinois BAIPA because it declared a "previable fetus" to be a legal person – even though the bill only did so if the baby had achieved “complete expulsion or extraction from its mother.” (Obama’s statements are quoted verbatim further on in this white paper.) The old Illinois law in question (720 ILCS 510.6) covered only situations where an abortionist declares before the abortion that there was “a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb.” Humans are often born alive a month or more before they reach the point where such “sustained survival” – that is, long-term survival – is likely or possible (which is often called the point of “viability”).
(Read more after the leap)
The old Illinois law has no bearing on many of the induced-labor abortions about which the nurses testified before the committees in Congress and the Illinois state legislature, because many of them were performed on unborn humans who were capable of being born alive, and who often were born alive, but who were not old enough to have a “reasonable likelihood of sustained survival . . . outside the womb.”
The relevant portion of law in question follows:
6 (720 ILCS 510/6) (from Ch. 38, par. 81-26)
7 Sec. 6. (1) (a) Any physician who intentionally performs
8 an abortion when, in his medical judgment based on the
9 particular facts of the case before him, there is a
10 reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus
11 outside the womb, with or without artificial support, shall
12 utilize that method of abortion which, of those he knows to
13 be available, is in his medical judgment most likely to
14 preserve the life and health of the fetus.
Why did Baron Hill endorse a candidate who defended infanticide?
September 9th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I think you’ll find that most states have laws which prevent non-viable human tissue from being kept alive indefinitely. It’s called “abusing a corpse”. You’ll need to amend that law as well.
You should also address other forms of living non-viable human tissue which is removed from a human, such as the umbilicus, the foreskin, the tonsils, the adenoids, the appendix, as well as various warts and tumors.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
There is a difference between “non-viable human tissue” and a distinct human life. You admit as much when you call it “abusing a corpse”. To compare a human life to a wart is grotesque and disingenuous.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:58 am
No, what they did to Terry Schiavo, keeping her heart pumping long after she was dead, was obscene and grotesque.
Jews decried the sin of Onan, who spilled his sperm on the ground rather than impregnate his brother’s widow. A man produces something like a hundred million sperm daily.
The Roman Catholic church believes that using birth control - even barrier methods such as using a condom or a diaphragm - is sinful because it results in the death of eggs that would otherwise be fertilized. It’s killing babies.
The mainline protestant churches generally believe that a fetus turns into a baby when it becomes capable of independent life - that is, when it crosses the threshold from previable to viable life.
Of the 50 states, exactly NONE of them requires issuance of a birth certificate when a previable fetus is expelled from the body, regardless of why the body expelled it. In Indiana, if it’s less than two pounds, it may be disposed of as medical waste, even though hospitals started saving some premature babies under two pounds in the 1980s.
The American Indian faiths, as a rule, decided that until a baby opened its eyes, it wasn’t a human life. If there were obvious defects, no nourishment was provided.
Yes, there is a difference between non-viable human tissue and a distinct human life. The difference is viability. Tissue that never was viable, and never will be viable, is not a distinct human life.
Which is why you don’t get a tax deduction for your foreskin, even if you manage to keep it alive.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Most “mainline protestant churches” don’t have a position on when a “fetus turns into a baby”. That is generally irrelevant to the discussion. Most “mainline protestant churches” believe that a fetus is a live human being. From a biological standpoint this is a simple observation at about 22 days after fertilization–about the time that most women figure out that they are pregnant.
You are using “viability” as a definition of life. This is silly. If I put 500 pounds of weights around my ankles and have it pushed into the ocean, I am not viable (i.e. I am not in an environment that will support my life). A fetus’s required environment is not the air, but inside a human womb. I would say that a fetus is “viable” after it attaches to the womb.
And just a bit of theology for you: the problem that the Jews had with Onan was not about the sperm. It was about his not fulfilling his duties to his sister-in-law by providing for her.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I am going to correct my comment above. From my perspective within a protestant church, I consider my branch to be “mainline”. This is not right. I am in the Evangelical wing of Protestantism. Harldelos may be correct regarding “mainline” Protestant churches, but not if “Evangelical” Protestant churches are being considered.
Ultimately, my positions and argument for life are informed far more by biology and American political science rather than by my religion.