Paul

Ibrahim

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August 19, 2008

On Abortion, Obama Acts ‘Above His Pay Grade’

Exactly two days ago, in Israel’s Nahariya Hospital, a woman in her fifth month of pregnancy underwent an abortion when doctors discovered that she was suffering from internal bleeding and that her fetus no longer appeared to be alive. After a doctor pronounced the now extracted body dead, the 610-gram baby was placed in the hospital cooler.

Five hours later, the baby’s father came to pick up his dead daughter’s body for burial. But, joyfully, when the baby was withdrawn from the cooler, she was breathing. Naturally, she was taken to the intensive care ward where doctors scrambled to keep her alive.

Barack Obama would have her die.

Obama would stop the doctors from saving the baby’s life, ordering them instead to throw the baby back in the cooler, or in the trash can, or anywhere but the intensive care ward. In order to satisfy his political conscience and please his radical supporters, he would have the baby girl die, regardless of her potential to survive.

Thrice while an Illinois state senator (which, of course, was not that long ago), Barack Obama opposed or blocked the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which sought humane treatment for any babies that survive an abortion, and only after they were completely outside of the mother’s body.

What rationale is there to throw out a living baby when she is entirely outside of her mother’s body, on a table, or in a cooler? What is it that distinguishes such behavior from infanticide?

Not much, even according to the most pro-choice members of the U.S. Congress. Indeed, in 2002, prior to Obama’s election to federal office, an identical bill was supported unanimously by the U.S. Senate, getting the support of even the most dedicated abortion advocates, such as Hillary Clinton. Obama would have been the only dissenter.

Recently Obama was asked at what point a baby would get “human rights.” Obama’s answer was: “Whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade.”

We may have grown desensitized to Obama’s routinely ambiguous answers, but this one crosses a moral line. Can Obama really not assert that a baby should get human rights at least when she is viable, wholly outside of her mother’s body and breathing independently?

Oh right, he can’t. That’s because he thrice indicated that such babies must be treated with the same respect given to a pair of tonsils after a tonsillectomy.

Could he possibly tell us when babies cease serving as hospital waste? A day after birth, perhaps? A week? A year? Is that still above his pay grade?

It is somewhat paradoxical, however, that considering the designation of human life as above his pay grade, Obama acts like he is quite certain about when human life begins. After all, someone so unsure about such a fundamental life or death question would not act before finding a convincing answer.

Yet Obama is not only the most pro-abortion senator in Washington, but he is also the only senator who supports post-birth “abortion.” These positions are quite radical for an individual who considers the beginning of human life a question above his pay grade.

Indeed, this inconsistency leads to one of three conclusions. Either Barack Obama knows when human rights should be granted (later than birth) and doesn’t want to admit it, or he knows when human rights should be granted (at birth or before birth) and finds it politically inconvenient to declare it, or he has no idea when human rights should be granted, yet is tenaciously supporting pre-birth and post-birth abortions despite the fact that, to him, he could very well be taking human life away from human beings.

Respectively, the three possibilities would make him extremist, or evil, or dreadfully reckless with human life – and none of the three is particularly palatable. Which is it, Barack?

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