CAMPAIGN '08 - Hold Your Nose, Toxic Slime

Even the foreign press sees the slinging.

"Barack Obama, baby killer?" by Dan Kennedy, Guardian UK

Excerpt

Buckle your seatbelt. Make sure your nausea bag is at the ready. Because the slimiest accusation yet aimed at Barack Obama is on the verge of having its moment in the mainstream media.

Within certain fringe elements of the anti-abortion right, it's been an article of faith for some time that Obama's support of abortion rights is so extreme that it encompasses infanticide. As in the deliberate murder of babies after they are born.

Sorry to spoil the suspense, but it's not true. As an Illinois state senator, Obama opposed a bill that could have had the effect of outlawing abortion, thus violating Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 US supreme court decision that guarantees a woman's right to choose. More about that in a moment. But first, let's look at the swamp from which this thing emerged.

I learned about Obama's alleged support for baby-killing a few weeks ago while perusing a local right-wing website called Pundit Review. What I found, in turn, referenced a 2006 blog post for the ultraconservative website of Human Events, written by Amanda Carpenter, laying out the parameters of the accusation.

According to Carpenter, the Illinois legislature in 2002 rejected a bill that "would have protected babies that survived late-term abortions", even though the wording was identical to a federal bill that passed overwhelmingly, and that was so non-controversial even Naral Pro-Choice America, the leading abortion-rights group, did not object to it. She added (accurately, unlike some of her other claims) that the Illinois bill came up for a vote twice, with Obama voting "present" the first time and "no" the second, and that he derailed the bill in committee in 2003.

Tracing the accusation back further, I discovered that Obama's Republican opponent in his 2004 US senate race, Alan Keyes, had sought to use the issue against him, accusing Obama of supporting "infanticide". At what must have been a memorable news conference, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, Keyes actually said: "Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has voted to behave in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."

Finally, I came across a blog entry written in August 2004 by Chicago Tribune reporter Eric Zorn, who clearly laid out the differences between the state and federal bills (scroll down to "Apple/Orange Report"). According to Zorn, the federal bill contained language that specified the law would do nothing to threaten a woman's right to obtain a legal abortion - language that was not included in the Illinois bill. (In other words, Amanda Carpenter's Human Events post was wrong.) Indeed, Obama said at the time that he would have voted in favor of the federal bill, but couldn't support the state bill because it appeared to be at odds with Roe v Wade.