According to Barack Obama, Gianna Jessen shouldn’t exist.
Miss Jessen is an exquisite example of what anti-abortion
advocates call a “survivor.” Well into her third trimester of
pregnancy, Gianna’s biological mother was injected with a saline
solution intended to induce a chemical abortion at a Los Angeles
County abortion center. Eighteen hours later, and precious minutes
before the abortionist’s arrival, Gianna emerged. Premature and
with severe injuries that resulted in cerebral palsy. But
alive.
Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have
been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse
called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital,
where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator,
then, months later, in foster care.
Gianna survived then, and thrives now (see for yourself here), because, as
she told me recently with a laugh, “I guess I don’t die easy.”
Which is what the abortionist may have thought as he signed his
victim’s birth certificate. Gianna’s medical records state that she
was “born during saline abortion.”
As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed
legislation to define as “persons” babies who survive late-term
abortions. Babies like Gianna. Obama said in a speech on the
Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly
emerged from their mother’s wombs are “persons,” and thus deserving
of equal protection under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
A federal version on the same legislation passed the Senate
unanimously and with the support of all but 15 members of the House
of Representatives. Gianna was present when President Bush signed
the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002.
When I asked Gianna to reflect on Obama’s candidacy, she paused,
then said, “I really hope the American people will have their eyes
wide open and choose to be discerning….He is extreme, extreme,
extreme.”
“Extreme” may not be the impression the hundreds of thousands of
Americans who have bought Obama’s autobiography have been left
with. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama’s presidential
manifesto, he calls abortion “undeniably difficult,” “a very
difficult issue,” “never a good thing” and “a wrenching moral
issue.”
He laments his party’s “litmus test” for “orthodoxy” on abortion
and other issues, and even admits, “I do not presume to know the
answer to that question.” That question being the moral status of
the fetus, who he nonetheless concedes has “moral weight.”
THOSE STATEMENTS ARE seriously made but, alas, cannot be taken at
all seriously. Obama has compiled a 100 percent lifetime
“pro-choice” voting record, including votes against any and all
restrictions on late-term abortions and parental involvement in
teenagers’ abortions.
To Obama, abortion, or “reproductive justice,” is “one of the
most fundamental rights we possess.” And he promises, “the first
thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” which
would over-turn hundreds of federal and state laws limiting
abortion, including the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and
bans on public funding of abortion.
Then there’s Obama’s aforementioned opposition to laws that
protect babies born-alive during botched abortions. If
partial-birth abortion is, as Democratic icon Daniel Patrick
Moynihan labeled it, “too close to infanticide,” then what is
killing fully-birthed babies?
On the campaign trail, Obama seldom speaks about abortion and
its related issues. But his few moments of candor are illuminative.
When speaking extemporaneously, Obama will admit things like “I
don’t want [my daughters] punished with a baby.” Or he’ll say that
voting for legislation allowing Terri Schiavo’s family to take its
case from state courts to federal courts in an effort to stop her
euthanasia was his “biggest mistake” in the Senate. Biggest
mistake?
Worst of all are Obama’s accusations against anti-abortion
advocates. He recently compared his relationship with unrepentant
domestic terrorist William Ayers, a member of a group responsible
for bombing government buildings, to his friendship with stalwart
pro-life doctor and Senator Tom Coburn.
In his campaign book, Obama accuses “most anti-abortion
activists” of secretly desiring more partial-birth abortions
“because the image the procedure evokes in the mind of the public
has helped them win converts to their position.”
All this explains why the National Abortion Rights Action League
voted unanimously to endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton, as did
abortion activist Frances Kissling, who called Hillary “not radical
enough on abortion.”
It’s surprising that 18 to 30 year olds, the most pro-life
demographic in a generation, is the same voting bloc from which
Barack Obama, the most anti-life presidential candidate ever, draws
his most ardent supporters.
What’s not surprising is that Gianna Jessen, who turned 31 last
month, plans not to support Obama.
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama denounces abortion
absolutism on both ends of the ideological spectrum. That is
audacious indeed considering Obama’s record, which epitomizes the
very radicalism and extremism he denounces.
