Would you stop to help?

[funscout]

If you saw a person in need of medical attention, would you seek help for that person? Most people wouldn't hesitate, but Obama voted against allowing doctors to save live-born babies who managed to survive the abortion process.

 

Even other Democrats feel he has gone too far to the left with allowing innocent babies to die simply because he was afraid it would lead to further curtailing of abortion rights.

 

I couldn't live with myself if I helped elect a man who thinks it's okay to allow innocent babies to be set aside to die, just because the parents didn't want a child. Even if you are not a religious person, how can you justify voting for a man who supports infanticide? If Obama's daughters knew this about their Dad, think how horrified they would be! I could just imagine them asking, "Daddy, why won't you save those babies?" I'd like to see him try to answer that question.

[vol_scouter]

funscout,

 

I have raised this point twice eith no response. I think that since this is recorded and has at least been on youtube, that Obama supporters cannot respond. How can a scouter defend allowing a baby to die without medical intervention? Saying that it could be 'inconvenient' for the mother is no reason to allow a separate being to die without medical treatment. It is inhuman. Obama is not fit to lead.

[AlFansome]

Info and analysis of the issue at:

 

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html

 

Couple of points from the analysis:

 

- There already is a law on the books in Illinois that requires medical care for born-alive babies who survive an abortion procedure. Read the first 4 or 5 paragraphs of http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/documents/072005100K6.htm.

 

If this law indeed provides the same or similar protections to born-alive infants as the proposed bills would have, then Obama's vote on the issue would seem to be less about the babies and more about politics and the abortion issue in general, since passing the new law wouldn't afford more protections to the infants.

 

National Right to Life says that current law has too many loopholes.

 

- Obama supports the Federal version of a similar Born Alive law.

 

- His stated reasons for opposition to the Illinois bill was that it was more about abortions and possible challenges to their legality that about live births.

 

- Obama has certainly "massaged" has explanation for his votes against the 2003 bill as described in the factcheck.org posting.

 

My comment:

 

If indeed there is a law already on the books that makes it a felony to do the things that the proposed bill forbids, then I don't see how Obama's vote in any way would affect the care of these children.

 

In addition, if Obama has repeatedly stated his support of the federal version of a similar bill, then I don't see a big issue here.

 

 

[vol_scouter]

AlFansome,

 

I understand the politics and reasons why a politician may vote against a bill that they may actually support many of the ideas. However, Obama was filmed saying that a baby should be denied medical treatment because it might be 'inconvenient' for the mother. In other words, a living independent being should be allowed to die for the convenience of another. That is what he said. That is inhuman. So someone has an elderly parent who is healthy and gets acutely ill. They say: "Don't do anything for them, it is inconvenient for me". That is ethically the same argument. Obama has an extreme view that is simply not defensible.

[AlFansome]

 

Except that here's the whole gist of his argument (from http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/21/obama-baipa-unnecessarily-burdens-doctors-with-babies/):

 

"[T]he only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made the assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, lets say for the purposes of the mothers health, is being that that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, and in fact this was not a nonviable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that the physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical procedures and practices that would be involved in saving that child.

Now, if if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects that doctors feel that they would already be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations, and that essentially adding a an additional doctor who the has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

Now, if thats the case and and I know some of us feel very strongly one way or the other on that issue thats fine, but I think its important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure theyre looked after."

 

 

Doesn't sound inhuman to me, especially when put in the context that there already was an Illinois law that already prohibits the type of behavior that was the subject of the bill, and that this vote by Obama would not significantly change what the law prescribes.

 

 

[packsaddle]

This would be less of an issue if the decision simply was left to the woman and her doctor - and if other people (and the government) would BUTT OUT.

[Beavah]

Yah, so now da neo-con pseudo-Republicans want to label Senator Obama a baby-killer, eh?

 

Have they no shame?

 

I'm as anti-abortion as they come, eh? Life begins at conception, or at least close enough that anything resemblin' an abortion procedure is naught but murder in most cases.

 

But as an old-time conservative, I also believe in honor and honesty. There is no honor in these attacks. They are despicable.

 

A president can do precious little about abortion. For good or ill, ending abortion in America is now a ground fight. It's about convincin' individual hearts and minds, until eventually we succeed in changin' Congress, who have the ability to propose constitutional amendments and federal laws.

 

But da things a president really does have influence over demand honesty and honor. Yah, and intelligence, eh? An ability to not be simplistic about complex issues. Da last thing we need right now is continued executive control by a party that has lost its way, and believes in jingoism over professional competence, or sowing "fear of the black man" over honorable dialog.

 

I was toyin' with votin' McCain, eh? Hard for me to vote for a democrat, bein' a traditional conservative sort, albeit with an independent streak. But this last turn of his campaign back toward the disgusting tactics of Rove is just too unAmerican for me. In the America I love, we can have heated discussions, and disagreements, but in da end we work together. The other guy, and the other party, are not our enemies, they are our fellow citizens.

 

And yeh don't call your fellow citizens terrorists and baby-killers.

 

Beavah