Election 2008

If you know me you know that I worked for Senator Jeff Sessions (one of Alabama’s Republican Senators) the summer after my sophomore year in college. This was a great experience for me and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. I learned a lot about the way our government works, made a great friend who I’m still close with today, and enjoyed getting out of my comfort zone to live for four weeks in a city that was huge compared to good ole Decatur.

Senator Obama wasn’t a Senator at this time and so I didn’t have any run ins with him. I have a great Hillary story about how un-friendly she was to interns but since she’s no longer in this race I’ll save that for another time.

I normally wouldn’t comment on politics on something like a blog, something that’s so extremely public but I ran across some information this week that I found very disturbing. It involved Obama’s vote on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that Obama killed in the Illinois state senate. I saw this article first when I was reading this article about why we Christian women shouldn’t oppose Sarah Palin just because she’s working outside of the home. I found the Palin article very interesting but it’s the Obama situation that I want to bring to your attention.

I’ve done a little research on this bill this morning because I didn’t want to send you somewhere with information that was spotty. And I’ve found interesting information that, of course, is debated by some but the articles at the end of the story give some good background information as long as “the facts” according to the Illinois state Senate about what really went down. To give you a little history, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was a law introduced to protect the rights of infants born alive after a failed abortion. The author of the first article mentioned above was a RN at an Illinois hospital and was witnessing doctors throw live babies in the trash or putting them on a shelf in an out of the way room to die after a failed abortion. This federal law was passed by unanimous consent in the US Senate in 2002 and was signed into law by President Bush.

A state version of this bill was introduced to the Illinois Senate multiple times in the early 2000’s. Senator Obama initially said when voting against the bill in 2001 and 2002 that the bill would stem the rights of Roe vs Wade. The Illinois state bill in 2001 and 2002 did differ from the version that passed at the federal level and the wording that existed in the Illinois bill could have been inferred to infringe on Roe vs Wade rights. However, in 2003 SB 1082 was amended unanimously in the state Senate committee that Senator Obama chaired to add the language that was present in the federal version of the bill that clarified that the bill could not override Roe vs. Wade protections. After agreeing to add that language to the bill, Senator Obama and five other colleagues voted against the bill and refused to send it to the state Senate floor for a full vote.

Senator Obama is currently stating that he would have voted for the 2003 version of the bill if it had been the same as the federal bill. However, the language that he wanted added to the bill actually was added right before he voted against the bill. Senator Obama says that he would have voted for the federal bill if he had been in the US Senate when the bill came up for vote, however we will never be able to know if that is, in fact, true. We can give him the benefit of the doubt that he would have made the right decision at that time, but the fact still remains that he killed an almost identical bill in Illinois.

Senator Obama also says that there was already a state bill protecting these infants so the bill that he killed was redundant and not needed. However, the Illinois Senate felt the need to pass the bill in 2005 after Senator Obama had left the state Senate so apparently someone felt that the bill was still necessary.

Don’t take my word for this. Go and do your own research. See what you feel about what Obama’s saying now and what written evidence we have about what really happened a few (not that many!) years ago. If you are a huge Obama supporter please excuse my soapbox, but I feel that this issue should be discussed even if we disagree. I’m not saying that Senator McCain would do everything right. No one’s perfect and I don’t agree with all of Senator McCain’s positions. And just like we don’t know what Senator Obama would have done with the federal version of this bill we also don’t know what Senator McCain would have done with a state version of this bill. So take all of this with a grain of salt, but go and do your own research and make your decision of who you want to vote for. And most of all, make sure you have all of the facts on the issues that are important to you before you vote in November.

In case you want to read some of what I found this week here are links to some articles that I found:

FactCheck.org piece – has links to the actual Illinois bills

National Right to Life White Paper on this issue

National Review article – information from Illinois Senate staffer who was in the Health Committee meetings with Senator Obama

CBS Article about Obama’s record including positive state bills that he supported

Illinois Review article by Jill Stanek (the nurse who wrote the first article linked to in this post)