Following is some research that I did in 2008. As far as I know, the facts are still valid. And it is worth repeating. Senator Barack Obama did either passively or overtly block Legislation that would have eliminated "Infanticide" in Illinois. He of course has tried to "wordsmith" his way out of it but so fare as we have seeen since his election, he doth mislead us too much! Of importance in the discussion below is the Case of Planned Parenthood vs Casey where the Supremes eliminated the trimester terminology in favor of "The Viability of the Fetus" which they felt was about 22-23 weeks and improving as Science improves.
Abortion Letter 1 – Background
September 8, 2008
Background
Ask a person how they feel about pro-choice v pro-life and most of the time you will get a definitive answer. Ask those same people about details like the cut off in terms of the Fetus life span and it starts to get complicated.
For the record, I do believe in government funding of abortion in the case of rape, incest or the health of the mother or another child.
Roe v. Wade
[4] In its landmark 1973 case, Roe v. Wade where a woman challenged the Texas laws criminalizing abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court reached two important conclusions:
• That abortion law was a federal constitutional law issue, not a state one, and was therefore subject to the Constitution of the United States and federal law;[5]
• That the procurement of an abortion was a constitutional right during the first and second trimesters of a pregnancy based on the constitutional right to privacy, but that the state's interest in protecting "potential life" prevailed in the third trimester unless the woman's health was at risk.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
In subsequent rulings, the Court rejected the trimester framework altogether in favor of a cutoff at the point of fetal viability (Cf. Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This decision came in June of 1992 and in essence made Roe “dead letter law”.
This was a decision that was made as a Plurality. Except for three opening sections of the O'Connor-Kennedy-Souter opinion, Casey a divided judgment, as no other sections of any opinion were joined by a majority of justices. However, the plurality decision jointly written by Justices Souter, O'Connor, and Kennedy is recognized as the lead opinion with precedential weight because each of its parts were concurred in by at least two other Justices, albeit different ones for each part.
Five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act were being challenged as unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade, which first recognized a constitutional right to have an abortion in the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
1. The "informed consent" rule under the Act required doctors to provide women with information about the health risks and possible complications of having an abortion before one could be performed.
2. The "spousal notification" rule required women to give prior notice to their husbands, and
3. The "parental consent" rule required minors to receive consent from a parent or guardian prior to an abortion.
4. The fourth provision imposed a 24-hour waiting period before obtaining an abortion.
5. The fifth provision challenged in the case was the imposition of certain reporting requirements on facilities providing abortion services. When the case came before the Court, Pennsylvania defended the Act in part by urging the Court to overturn Roe as having been wrongly decided.
The plurality then overturned the strict trimester formula used in Roe to weigh the woman's interest in obtaining an abortion against the State's interest in the life of the fetus. Continuing advancements in medical technology meant that at the time Casey was decided, a fetus might be considered viable at 22 or 23 weeks rather than at the 28 weeks that was more common at the time of Roe. The plurality recognized viability as the point at which the state interest in the life of the fetus outweighs the rights of the woman and abortion may be banned entirely.
The plurality struck down the spousal notification requirement, stating that it gave too much power to husbands over their wives and would worsen situations of spousal abuse. However, the plurality upheld the State's 24 hour waiting period, informed consent, and parental notification requirements, holding that none constituted an undue burden.
As you can see, definitions seem to change as technology improves and society becomes more knowledgeable. While we have been discussing the “Legal” opinions of this issue above we have not discussed Ethical issues. In order to do this, it is equally important to understand the “Scientific Issues”.
In our second issue we will present an overview of the development of the Fetus.
.Abortion Letter 2 – The Fetus
September 8, 2008
Please go to the site below for excellent pictures and explanations.
Fetus Development Body Tour
From http://www.standupgirl.com/
One Month
Body Tour
Written by Web Master
Tuesday, 18 January 2005
Fertilization! The sperm and egg join in your fallopian tube to form a unique human being -- that's 46 combined chromosomes which pre-determine all of a person's physical characteristics. Washed into your uterus, the developing embryo searches for a nice place to implant and is only one-sixth of an inch long, but growing quickly.
The heart, no larger than a poppy seed, has been beating since day 18 when you're just four days late for your menstrual period, and by 21 days it is pumping, through its own closed circulatory system, blood whose type is different from yours.
(Comment – So, by the time you know that you are pregnant, 46 Chromosomes that determine all of a unique human being have formed and the heart is beating through a closed circulatory system. So, if this is a unique human being, is viability really an issue? Is this any less viable than an infant who depends on the parent for clothing and nourishment?)
Four weeks after fertilization the eye, ear and respiratory systems begin to form and thumb sucking has been photographed within the first month by scientists.
Did ya know?
The baby at the fetal stage savours its mother's meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb. And you wondered why you love spicy food so much!
4-2-2008
Obama Blocked Born Alive Infant Protection Act
by Jill Stanek, guest reporter
He often stood alone as an Illinois lawmaker in opposition to protections for babies who survived abortion.
Note: This report first appeared in the April issue of Citizen magazine.
On Jan. 10, 2005, newly elected U.S. Sen. Barack Obama visited former colleagues and staffers at the Illinois state Capitol, where he had served seven years as state senator. I happened to be at the Capitol that day, too, and a friend and I took the opportunity to speak to Obama, who had not yet achieved rock-star status and was still approachable.
We were in Springfield to lobby for passage of the state Born Alive Infant Protection Act, legislation that would require hospitals to care for infants who survive an abortion. Obama spoke against the legislation in 2001 and 2002 and single-handedly defeated it in committee in 2003.
My friend stood in Obama’s path and said, “Senator, we are going to pass Born Alive here in Illinois this year.”
Obama smiled smoothly and agreed, “I think you will,” adding, “I would have voted for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois had it been worded the same as the federal bill. I think that’s the position the Democrats should take.”
There’s just one thing he forgot to mention: Obama had stopped his committee from adding the federal wording.
With Obama no longer in the state Senate, the Born Alive legislation passed in 2005.
First encounter
An Illinois lawmaker offered the first draft of the state’s Born Alive Infant Protection Act in 2001 after I revealed publicly that Christ Hospital left babies who survived abortion — viable babies whose delivery was induced, and whom the abortionist intended to kill but somehow survived — in a utility room to die.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Patrick O’Malley of Oak Lawn defined “born alive” using language identical to that of federal legislation introduced in 2000 by Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., who in turn drafted wording developed by the World Health Organization in 1950 and adopted by the United Nations in 1955:
The term “born alive,” with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.
I first encountered Barack Obama on March 27, 2001, when I testified before the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he was a member. My testimony included my description of holding a premature aborted baby until he died:
One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down’s syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about ½ pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end, he was so quiet that I couldn’t tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken.
Obama questioned whether the born alive legislation would impede the right to abort and doctor/patient decision-making. He and an American Civil Liberties Union attorney speculated Born Alive would force doctors to resuscitate nonviable aborted babies.
Obama opposed Born Alive in committee, but voted “present” — neither “yes” nor “no,” but merely “present” — on the state Senate floor, one of many “present” votes that Hillary Clinton has cited as evidence that Obama lacks leadership skills. Clinton voted for the federal Born Alive bill, putting her on record as more pro-life than Obama.
Constitutional blindness
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for 10 years. Both schools are listed in the top 10 law schools in the country.
But Obama revealed his constitutional blind spot in his book The Audacity of Hope:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created [emphasis added] equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
… (T)he essential idea behind the Declaration — that we are born [emphasis added] into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can’t be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make of our lives what we will — is one that every American understands.
Note Obama’s choice of the word “born” over the word “created.” Perhaps that helps explain his support for unrestricted abortion. Also note that our "bundle of rights” can be “taken away” with “just cause.”
Obama clearly considers abortion a “just cause.” Here is how he argued against Born Alive during Illinois Senate debate in 2001:
… I just want to suggest … that this (legislation) is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. (Actually, it did!)
Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — child, a 9-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.
I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional.
The legislation passed the Senate but did not survive in the House.
When Rep. O’Malley reintroduced Born Alive and its companion bills in 2002, they headed again to the same committee, where Obama rewrote history:
"Ms. Stanek, your initial testimony last year showed your dismay at the lack of regard for human life. I agreed with you last year, and we suggested that there be a Comfort Room or something of that nature be done. The hospital acknowledged that and changes were made and you are still unimpressed. It sounds to me like you are really not interested in how these fetuses are treated, but rather not providing absolutely any medical care or life to them."
Of course, Obama had not agreed with me the year before, and I was the one who had told him about the Comfort Room, which the hospital created in response to my testimony: "We now have this prettily wallpapered room. … There is even a nice wooden rocker in the room to rock live aborted babies to death."
The hospital made live birth abortions look nicer, but the end result was still dead babies.
“What we are doing here is to create one more burden on women, and I can’t support that,” Obama concluded, and voted “no” in committee again.
The bill went again to the Senate floor, where Obama was the sole speaker against it, claiming that it would impose a “burden” on physicians:
[T]his [legislation] puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they are performing this procedure, that in fact, this is a nonviable fetus.
Troubled conscience?
Democrats won control of the state Senate in November 2002, and when Born Alive was reintroduced for the third time in 2003, it was directed to the Obama-chaired, infamously liberal Health and Human Services Committee, where he simply refused to call it for a vote.
By this time Obama was running for U.S. Senate. He won his primary in March 2004, and Republicans recruited former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes, who lived in Maryland, to oppose him. It was Obama’s position against Born Alive that persuaded Keyes to run, as he stated in his announcement speech:
"When I was first approached about this possibility… I have to say that my reaction was negative…. What finally caught my eye, however… what finally arrested my attention and forced me to consider whether I not only had the opportunity to oppose him, but the obligation… was when I learned that (Obama) had actually, in April 2002, apparently cast a vote that would continue to allow live birth abortions in the state of Illinois … .
"We are talking about a situation in which, in the course of an abortion procedure, a child has been born alive — is out of the womb, breathing and living on its own — and he cast a vote against the idea that we should not stand by and let that child die!"
This was why Keyes alleged during their campaign that Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, as he explained in an interview with an NBC affiliate:
Christ would not stand idly by while an infant child in that situation died. … 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.
Obama later admitted Keyes’ comment “nagged” him and has written or spoke about it several times, although he always misrepresents Keyes’ rationale as being about abortion support when it was specifically about infanticide support. In a July 2006 opinion piece in USA Today, restated later in The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote:
If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Obama’s faith has come into question on the campaign trail. Accused of being a Muslim, he’s insisted that he’s “rooted in the Christian tradition” and has a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” In fact, Obama has attended the largest church in one of America’s most stridently pro-abortion denominations — the United Church of Christ — for 20 years. His church, Trinity, is located just five miles from Christ Hospital. Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, served on the board of Christ Hospital’s health care system.
It’s ironic in the extreme that the most determined opponents of preborn life — and even those who are born — embrace the name of the One who caused John the Baptist to leap in his mother’s womb.
Jill Stanek writes a weekly column for WorldNetDaily.com and is a pro-life speaker and blogger.
(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)
Testimony of Jill L. Stanek, RN
Hearing on H.R. 4292, the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act of 2000"
July 20, 2000
I am a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for the past five years. Christ Hospital performs abortions on women in their second or even third trimesters of pregnancy. Sometimes the babies being aborted are healthy, and sometimes they are not.
The method of abortion that Christ Hospital uses is called "induced labor abortion," also now known as "live birth abortion." This type of abortion can be performed different ways, but the goal always is to cause a pregnant woman's cervix to open so that she will deliver a premature baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward. The way that induced abortion is most often executed at my hospital is by the physician inserting a medication called Cytotec into the birth canal close to the cervix. Cytotec irritates the cervix and stimulates it to open. When this occurs, the small, preterm baby drops out of the uterus, oftentimes alive. It is not uncommon for one of these live aborted babies to linger for an hour or two or even longer. One of them once lived for almost eight hours.
In the event that a baby is aborted alive, he or she receives no medical assessments or care but is only given what my hospital calls "comfort care." "Comfort care" is defined as keeping the baby warm in a blanket until he or she dies, although even this minimal compassion is not always provided. It is not required that these babies be held during their short lives.
One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about 10 inches long. He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet that I couldn't tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our dead patients are taken.
Other co-workers have told me many upsetting stories about live aborted babies whom they have cared for. I was told about an aborted baby who was supposed to have Spina bifida but was delivered with an intact spine. Another nurse is haunted by the memory of an aborted baby who came out weighing much more than expected ~ almost two pounds. She is haunted because she doesn't know if she made a mistake by not getting that baby medical help. A Support Associate told me about a live aborted baby who was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown into the garbage, and when they later were going through the trash to find the baby, the baby fell out of the towel and on to the floor.
I was recently told about a situation by a nurse who said, "I can't stop thinking about it." She had a patient who was 23+ weeks pregnant, and it did not look as if her baby would be able to continue to live inside of her. The baby was healthy and had up to a 39% chance of survival, according to national statistics. But the patient chose to abort. The baby was born alive. If the mother had wanted everything done for her baby, there would have been a neonatologist, pediatric resident, neonatal nurse, and respiratory therapist present for the delivery, and the baby would have been taken to our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for specialized care. Instead, the only personnel present for this delivery were an obstetrical resident and my co-worker. After delivery the baby, who showed early signs of thriving, was merely wrapped in a blanket and kept in the Labor & Delivery Department until she died 2-1/2 hours later.
Something is very wrong with a legal system that says doctors are mandated to pronounce babies dead but are not mandated to assess babies for life and chances of survival. In other words, our laws currently say that babies have no rights to medical oversight until they are dead. We look the other way and pretend that these babies aren't human while they're alive but human only after they are dead. We issue these babies both birth and death certificates, but it is really only the death certificate that matters. No other children in America are medically abandoned like this.
Abortion is a cancer that is literally killing America. It is killing our children while it is killing our consciences. It began when we took God out of our decision making and proclaimed that the little beings growing inside of women were "products of conception" and not little girls and little boys. Who should be surprised that we keep pushing the envelope so that now we are aborting these "products of conception" alive? I even work at a hospital named "Christ" that does this very thing! It is beyond me to comprehend that we're doing what we're doing now, and so I can't even imagine what horrible ways we will think of next to torture our children. Please help put an end to this by proclaiming infants as American human being homo sapiens with the same legal and medical rights that you and I big people have. Thank you.
Added to second-to-last paragraph of Jill's oral testimony:
"I am also very uncomfortable with the fact that the very doctors who may be miscalculating due dates and fetal birth weights, or misdiagnosing fetal handicaps, are the same ones deciding that these babies should not be assessed after delivery. Shouldn't these babies be given the simple opportunity for second opinion, just like you and I?"
Statement of Allison Baker, RN, BSN
Hearing on H.R. 4292, The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
Subcommittee on the Constitution
July 20, 2000
In August of 1998 I began working in a high risk labor and delivery unit at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois. When I was hired, I was informed of a procedure called "therapeutic abortion" which was performed in the unit. This procedure was reserved for babies with particular conditions such as Down's Syndrome, Spina Bifida, Potter's Syndrome and many others. It was explained to me that in these cases, the mother would have an induced labor to expel the fetus in order to discontinue growth and life. This was an elective procedure and the patient was to be informed of all the details it involved.
Between August of 1998 and August of 1999, I witnessed three particular cases of therapeutic abortions at Christ Hospital first hand. The first occurred on a day shift. I happened to walk into a "soiled utility room" and saw, lying on the metal counter, a fetus, naked, exposed and breathing, moving its arms and legs. The fetus was visibly alive, and was gasping for breath. I left to find the nurse who was caring for the patient and this fetus. When I asked her about the fetus, she said that she was so busy with the mother that she didn't have time to wrap and place the fetus in the warmer, and she asked if I would do that for her. Later I found out that the fetus was 22 weeks old, and had undergone a therapeutic abortion because it had been diagnosed with Down's Syndrome. I did wrap the fetus and place him in a warmer and for 2-1/2 hours he maintained a heartbeat, and then finally expired.
The second case involved a couple who had requested a therapeutic abortion for their 20 week fetus with Spina Bifida. My shift started at 11:00 PM, and the patient delivered her fetus about 10 minutes before I took her as a patient. During the time the fetus was alive, the patient kept asking me when the fetus would die. For an hour and 45 minutes the fetus maintained a heartbeat. The parents were frustrated, and obviously not prepared for this long period of time. Since I was the nurse of both the mother and fetus, I held the fetus in my arms until it finally expired.
The third case occurred when a nurse with whom I was working was taking care of a mother waiting to deliver her 16 week Down's Syndrome fetus. Again, I walked into the soiled utility room and the fetus was fully exposed, lying on the baby scale. I went to find the nurse who was caring for this mother and fetus, and she asked if I could help her by measuring and weighing the fetus for the charting and death certificate. When I went back into the soiled utility room, the fetus was moving its arms and legs. I then listened for a heartbeat, and found that the fetus still was alive. I wrapped the fetus and in 45 minutes the fetus finally expired.
________________________________________
Obama and 'Infanticide'
August 25, 2008
The facts about Obama's votes against 'Born Alive' bills in Illinois.
Summary
Anti-abortion activists accuse Obama of "supporting infanticide," and the National Right to Life Committee says he's conducted a "four-year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions." Obama says they're "lying."
At issue is Obama's opposition to Illinois legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003 that would have defined any aborted fetus that showed signs of life as a "born alive infant" entitled to legal protection, even if doctors believe it could not survive.
Obama opposed the 2001 and 2002 "born alive" bills as backdoor attacks on a woman's legal right to abortion, but he says he would have been "fully in support" of a similar federal bill that President Bush had signed in 2002, because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade.
We find that, as the NRLC said in a recent statement, Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported. Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus, according to an undisputed summary written immediately after the committee's 2003 mark-up session.
Whether opposing "born alive" legislation is the same as supporting "infanticide," however, is entirely a matter of interpretation. That could be true only for those, such as Obama's 2004 Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, who believe a fetus that doctors give no chance of surviving is an "infant." It is worth noting that Illinois law already provided that physicians must protect the life of a fetus when there is "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support."
Analysis
Republican Senate candidate Alan Keyes attacked Barack Obama over this legislation during their 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, repeatedly accusing him of favoring "infanticide." Because of this, Keyes said, "Christ would not vote for Barack Obama." Nevertheless, 70 percent of Illinois voters did vote for Obama, but now the issue has bubbled up again.
The National Right to Life Committee released a statement Aug. 11 saying it had obtained proof that Obama was misrepresenting his 2003 vote by stating that the Illinois "born alive" bill that he voted against in committee lacked a provision, contained in the 2002 federal law, that foreclosed any effect on abortion rights. Obama, in an Aug. 16 interview, then said critics of his "born alive" stance were "not telling the truth" and "lying." On Aug. 18, the NRLC updated its white paper and continued to accuse Obama of dissembling.
As originally proposed, the 2003 state bill, SB 1082, sought to define the term "born-alive infant" as any infant, even one born as the result of an unsuccessful abortion, that shows vital signs separate from its mother. The bill would have established that infants thus defined were humans with legal rights. It never made it to the floor; it was voted down by the Health and Human Services Committee, which Obama chaired.
Earlier versions of the bill, in 2001 and 2002, had met with opposition from abortion-rights groups, which contended that they would be used to challenge Roe v. Wade. Because the bills accorded human rights to pre-viable fetuses (that is, fetuses that could not live outside the womb) as long as they showed some vital signs outside the mother, abortion-rights groups saw them as the thin edge of a wedge that could be used to pry apart legal rights to abortion. Obama stated this objection on the Senate floor in discussion of both bills.
However, Obama has said several times that he would have supported the federal version of the bill, which passed by unanimous consent and which President Bush signed into law Aug. 5, 2002, because it could not be used to challenge the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision granting a legal right to abortion. On Aug. 16, the candidate repeated that again to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network. He also prefaced his remarks with an attack on those who said he had misrepresented his position on the state bills, saying they were "lying."
CBN Correspondent David Brody: Real quick, the born alive infant protection act. I gotta tell you that's the one thing I get a lot of emails about and it's just not just from Evangelicals, it about Catholics, Protestants, main – they're trying to understand it because there was some literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee. And they're basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill.
Obama: Let me clarify this right now.
Brody: Because it's getting a lot of play.
Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported – which was to say – that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born – even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade.
Who's "Lying?"
NRLC objects. They point to evidence that SB 1082, the bill Obama voted against in committee, was amended to contain a "neutrality clause" that is identical to one contained in the federal law. (The Illinois government's legislative information Web site shows the proposed amendment, but doesn't give results for votes in committee. NRLC's documents show that the amendment was adopted.) Since he voted against the state bill, NRLC says, his claimed worry about Roe v. Wade is a smokescreen, intended to cover up his unconcern with the protection of infant lives.
In the NRLC white paper, Legislative Director Douglas Johnson writes that Obama "really did object to a bill merely because it defended the proposition, 'A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.' And it is that reality that he now desperately wants to conceal from the eyes of the public."
NRLC posted documents – which are so far undisputed – showing that Amendment 001 was adopted in committee and added the following text: "Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this Section." That wording matches exactly the comparable provision in the federal law.
The documents NRLC put out are a "Senate Republican's staff analysis" and a handwritten roll call confirming that the amendment was adopted. We contacted Patty Schuh, spokesperson for the Illinois Senate Republicans, who stated that both documents are genuine. We also contacted Brock Willeford, who was the staff aide whose name appears on the "staff analysis." He stated that he wrote the document immediately after the committee meeting and that he was in the room at the time of the votes. We asked Cindy Davidsmeyer, spokesperson for the Illinois Senate Democrats, about this. She declined to answer our questions but did not dispute Willeford's firsthand account.
A June 30 Obama campaign statement responding to similar claims by conservative commentator William J. Bennett says that SB 1082 did not contain the same language as the federal BAIPA.
Obama campaign statement, June 30: Illinois And Federal Born Alive Infant Protection Acts Did Not Include Exactly The Same Language. The Illinois legislation read, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law." The Born Alive Infant Protections Act read, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section." [SB 1082, Held in Health and Human Services, 3/13/03; Session Sine Die, 1/11/05; BAIPA, Public Law 107-207]
The statement was still on Obama's Web site as of this writing, Aug. 25, long after Obama had accused his detractors of "lying." But Obama's claim is wrong. In fact, by the time the HHS Committee voted on the bill, it did contain language identical to the federal act.
Same Words, Different Effect?
Obama’s campaign now has a different explanation for his vote against the 2003 Illinois bill. Even with the same wording as the federal law, the Obama camp says, the state bill would have a different effect than the BAIPA would have at the federal level. It's state law, not federal law, that actually regulates the practice of abortion. So a bill defining a pre-viable fetus born as the result of abortion as a human could directly affect the practice of abortion at the state level, but not at the federal level, the campaign argues.
And in fact, the 2005 version of the Illinois bill, which passed the Senate 52 to 0 (with four voting "present") after Obama had gone on to Washington, included an additional protective clause not included in the federal legislation: "Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affect existing federal or State law regarding abortion." Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor says that Obama would have voted for that bill if he had been in state office at the time.
But whether or not one accepts those arguments, it is not the reason Obama had been giving for his 2003 opposition. He told Brody that the federal bill "was not the bill that was presented at the state level." That's technically true; though the "neutrality clause" was identical in the federal and state bills, there were other minor wording differences elsewhere. But the Obama campaign statement says that "Illinois And Federal Born Alive Infant Protection Acts Did Not Include Exactly The Same Language." That's true for the earlier versions that Obama voted against. In the case of SB 1082, as it was amended just before being killed, it’s false.
A Matter of Definition
The documents from the NRLC support the group’s claims that Obama is misrepresenting the contents of SB 1082. But does this mean – as some, like anti-abortion crusader Jill Stanek, have claimed – that he supports infanticide?
In discussions of abortion rights, definitions are critically important. The main bills under discussion, SB 1082 and the federal BAIPA, are both definition bills. They are not about what can and should be done to babies; they are about how one defines "baby" in the first place. Those who believe that human life begins at conception or soon after can argue that even a fetus with no chance of surviving outside the womb is an "infant." We won't try to settle that one.
What we can say is that many other people – perhaps most – think of "infanticide" as the killing of an infant that would otherwise live. And there are already laws in Illinois, which Obama has said he supports, that protect these children even when they are born as the result of an abortion. Illinois compiled statute 720 ILCS 510/6 states that physicians performing abortions when the fetus is viable must use the procedure most likely to preserve the fetus' life; must be attended by another physician who can care for a born-alive infant; and must "exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion." Failure to do any of the above is considered a felony. NRLC calls this law "loophole-ridden."
On the Record
While we don't have a record of Obama's 2003 comments on SB 1082, he did express his objection to the 2001 and 2002 bills.
Obama, Senate floor, 2002: [A]dding a – an additional doctor who then 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. … I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births.
Obama, Senate floor, 2001: Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old – child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.
Obama's critics are free to speculate on his motives for voting against the bills, and postulate a lack of concern for babies' welfare. But his stated reasons for opposing "born-alive" bills have to do with preserving abortion rights, a position he is known to support and has never hidden.
-by Jess Henig
Sources
Johnson, Douglas. "Obama Cover-up on Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Continues to Unravel After Sen. Obama Says NRLC is 'Lying,'" 18 Aug. 2008.
Illinois Senate Republicans. "Staff Analysis, Senate Bill 1082," 13 Mar. 2003.
Illinois General Assembly Committee on Health and Human Services. "Senate Committee Action Report," 12 Mar. 2003.
Obama for America. "Fact Check on CNN and Bennet's [sic] Inaccurate Claim That IL 'Born Alive' Legislation Obama Opposed Was the Same as Federal Legislation He Supported," 30 Jun. 2008.
107th United States Congress. "Born Alive Infants Protection Act," 23 Jan. 2002.
Illinois 92nd General Assembly. SB 1093, 22 Feb. 2001.
Illinois 92nd General Assembly. SB 1094, 22 Feb. 2001.
Illinois 92nd General Assembly. SB 1095, 22 Feb. 2001.
Illinois 92nd General Assembly. SB 1661, 30 Jan. 2002.
Illinois 92nd General Assembly. SB 1662, 30 Jan. 2002.
Illinois 93rd General Assembly. SB 1082, 19 Feb. 2003.
Illinois 93rd General Assembly. SB 1083, 19 Feb. 2003.
Illinois 94th General Assembly. HB 0984, 3 Feb. 2005.
Obama for America. "The Truth Behind False, Outrageous Lies about Obama and 'Born Alive' Legislation." 19 Aug. 2008.
Stanek, Jill. "Obama's 10 Reasons for Supporting Infanticide," 16 Jan. 2008.
Abortion-Infanticide Letter 5 – Ethical Discussion
September 8, 2008
In letters 1 and 2 we briefly reviewed the Legal and Scientific status on Abortion. In letter 3 we presented an overview of “Infanticide” with a particular emphasis in exposing Obama’s Extreme Position that even and infant who has exited the mothers womb and is breathing (but with difficulty” does not enjoy the right to have the doctors and nurses assist them in surviving. For Obama it is acceptable to put them in a separate room until they expire. This position is more extreme than any pro-choice organization or pro-choice legislators. And in many of our opinions it is an endorsement of “murder”.
As we have seen Roe v. Wade separated birth in to 3 Trimesters and declared that Abortions were acceptable under law in trimesters 1 and 2. However, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey the Supreme Court recognized that with advances in technology the old Trimester view was no longer acceptable so they created the opinion that the Fetus might in fact be “Viable”at 22 or 23 weeks rather than the 28 weeks that was accepted at time of Roe v.Wade. The Plurality recognized “viability” as the point at which the state interest in the life of the fetus outweighs the rights of the woman and abortion may be banned entirely.
As we can see, whenever we have lawyers making recommendations of ethics and Lawyer Legislators implementing these recommendations it is very alarming and must be thoroughly reviewed by affected parties and then reviewed by the Supremes. It is not a perfect system but it is the least imperfect system in the world.
The second letter tells us that at 4 weeks, the sperm and the egg join in the fallopian tube to form a “unique human being” that has 46 combined chromosomes which pre-determine all of the persons' physical characteristics. The heart is beating since day 18, and by 21 days is pumping through its own circulatory system blood whose type is different from your own.
Regardless of the changing “legal” interpretations of Abortion, can there be any ethical argument to support Infanticide?
Do we want a President who supports this horrendous practice? Is this not an indcation of his values?
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 22, 1992
Decided June 29, 1992
Full case name: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, et al. v. Robert P. Casey, et al.
Citations: 505 U.S. 833 (see more...); 112 S. Ct. 2791; 120 L. Ed. 2d 674; 1992 U.S. LEXIS 4751; 60 U.S.L.W. 4795; 92 Daily Journal DAR 8982; 6 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 663
Prior history: Judgment and injunction for plaintiffs, 686 F. Supp. 1089 (E.D. Pa. 1988); injunction clarified, 736 F.Supp. 633 (E.D. Pa. 1990); judgment and injunction granted for plaintiffs, 744 F.Supp. 1323 (E.D. Pa. 1990) (regarding 1988 amendments to 1982 Act); affirmed in part and reversed in part, 947 F. 2d 682 (3d Cir. 1991); certiorari granted 502 U.S. 1056 (1992)
Subsequent history: Remanded, 978 F.2d 74 (2d Cir. 1992); motion to disqualify judge denied, 812 F. Supp. 541 (E.D. Pa. 1993); record reopened and injunctions continued, 822 F. Supp. 227 (E.D. Pa. 1993); reversed and remanded, 14 F.3d 848 (3d Cir. 1994); stay denied, 510 U.S. 1309 (1994); attorney fees and costs awarded to plaintiffs, 869 F. Supp. 1190 (E.D. Pa. 1994); affirmed, 60 F.3d 816 (3d Cir. 1995)
Holding
A Pennsylvania law that required spousal notification prior to obtaining an abortion was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment because it created an undue burden on married women seeking an abortion. Requirements for parental consent, informed consent, and 24-hour waiting period were constitutionally valid regulations. Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part.
Court membership
Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: Byron White, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas
Case opinions
Plurality by: O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter (jointly)
Concurrence/dissent by: Stevens
Concurrence/dissent by: Blackmun
Concurrence/dissent by: Rehnquist
Joined by: White, Scalia, Thomas
Concurrence/dissent by: Scalia
Joined by: Rehnquist, White, Thomas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV; 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§ 3203, 3205-09, 3214 (Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982)
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the constitutionality of several Pennsylvania state regulations regarding abortion was challenged. The Court's lead plurality opinion upheld the constitutional right to have an abortion but lowered the standard for analyzing restrictions of that right, invalidating one regulation but upholding the others.
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Background of the case
o 1.1 The District Court's ruling
o 1.2 Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision
o 1.3 The Supreme Court's consideration
• 2 The Court's opinions
o 2.1 The O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter plurality opinion
o 2.2 The concurrence/dissents
• 3 See also
• 4 References
• 5 External links
[edit] Background of the case
Five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act were being challenged as unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade, which first recognized a constitutional right to have an abortion in the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The "informed consent" rule under the Act required doctors to provide women with information about the health risks and possible complications of having an abortion before one could be performed. The "spousal notification" rule required women to give prior notice to their husbands, and the "parental consent" rule required minors to receive consent from a parent or guardian prior to an abortion. The fourth provision imposed a 24-hour waiting period before obtaining an abortion. The fifth provision challenged in the case was the imposition of certain reporting requirements on facilities providing abortion services. When the case came before the Court, Pennsylvania defended the Act in part by urging the Court to overturn Roe as having been wrongly decided.
The case was a seminal one in the history of abortion rights in the United States. It was the first case which provided an opportunity to overturn Roe since the two most liberal Justices, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, were replaced with the Bush-appointed Justices David Souter and Clarence Thomas. Both were viewed as ostensible conservatives compared to their predecessors.[citation needed] This left the Court with eight Republican-appointed justices - five of whom had been appointed by Presidents Reagan or Bush, both of which were well known for their opposition to Roe. Finally, the only remaining Democratic appointee - Justice Byron White - had been one of the two dissenters from the original Roe decision.
At this point, only two of the Justices were obvious supporters of Roe v. Wade: Blackmun, the author of Roe, and Stevens, who had joined opinions specifically reaffirming Roe in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health and Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Given these circumstances, even most pro-choice advocates expected Roe to be overruled and were gearing up for a subsequent state-by-state campaign against the passage of particular anti-abortion laws[citation needed]
The case was argued by ACLU attorney Kathryn Kolbert for Planned Parenthood. Pennsylvania attorney general Ernest Preate, Jr. argued the case for the State. In the Supreme Court oral arguments, Solicitor General Kenneth Starr spoke for the Bush Administration.
[edit] The District Court's ruling
The plaintiffs were four abortion clinics and a class action of physicians who provide abortion services, in addition to one physician representing himself independently. They filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to enjoin the state from enforcing the five provisions and have them declared facially unconstitutional. The District Court, after a three-day bench trial, held that all the provisions were unconstitutional and entered a permanent injunction against Pennsylvania's enforcement of them.
[edit] Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision
The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, upholding all of the regulations except for the husband notification requirement. Then-Circuit Judge Samuel Alito sat on that three-judge appellate panel and dissented from the court's invalidation of that requirement.
[edit] The Supreme Court's consideration
At the conference of the Justices two days later, Justice Souter defied expectations and voted against any gutting of Roe v. Wade, joining Justices O'Connor, Stevens, and Blackmun, who had likewise refused to do so three years earlier in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. This resulted in a precarious five Justice majority consisting of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Byron White, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas that favored upholding all the abortion restrictions and in effect reducing Roe to dead letter. However, Kennedy changed his mind shortly thereafter and secretly joined with fellow Reagan-Bush justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter to write a plurality opinion that would reaffirm Roe. [1]
[edit] The Court's opinions
Except for three opening sections of the O'Connor-Kennedy-Souter opinion, Casey a divided judgment, as no other sections of any opinion were joined by a majority of justices. However, the plurality decision jointly written by Justices Souter, O'Connor, and Kennedy is recognized as the lead opinion with precedential weight because each of its parts were concurred in by at least two other Justices, albeit different ones for each part.
[edit] The O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter plurality opinion
These three justices began their written opinion by noting the U.S. government's previous challenges to Roe v. Wade:
"Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade (1973), that definition of liberty is still questioned. Joining the respondents as amicus curiae, the United States, as it has done in five other cases in the last decade, again asks us to overrule Roe."
The plurality opinion stated that it was upholding what it called the "essential holding" of Roe. The plurality asserted that the right to abortion is grounded in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the plurality reiterated what the Court had said in Eisenstadt v. Baird: "[i]f the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."
The plurality's opinion also included some controversial language about the doctrine of stare decisis. The plurality emphasized the need to stand by prior decisions even if they were unpopular, unless there had been a change in the fundamental reasoning underpinning the previous decision. It also acknowledged the need for predictability and constancy in judicial decision making. For example,
"Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases, its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the Court's interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution."
The plurality went on to give society's rejection of the "Separate but Equal" concept as a legitimate reason for the Brown v. Board of Education court’s rejection of the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine. Emphasizing the need to not be seen as overruling a prior decision merely because the individual members of the Court had changed, O’Connor states,
"Because neither the factual underpinnings of Roe's central holding nor our understanding of it has changed (and because no other indication of weakened precedent has been shown), the Court could not pretend to be reexamining the prior law with any justification beyond a present doctrinal disposition to come out differently from the Court of 1973.”
Since the plurality overruled some portions of Roe v. Wade despite its emphasis on stare decisis, Chief Justice Rehnquist in dissent argued that this section was entirely obiter dicta. All these opening sections were joined by Justices Blackmun and Stevens for the majority. The remainder of the decision did not command a majority, but at least two other Justices concurred in judgment on each of the remaining points.
The plurality then overturned the strict trimester formula used in Roe to weigh the woman's interest in obtaining an abortion against the State's interest in the life of the fetus. Continuing advancements in medical technology meant that at the time Casey was decided, a fetus might be considered viable at 22 or 23 weeks rather than at the 28 weeks that was more common at the time of Roe. The plurality recognized viability as the point at which the state interest in the life of the fetus outweighs the rights of the woman and abortion may be banned entirely.
The plurality also replaced the heightened scrutiny of abortion regulations under Roe, which was standard for fundamental rights in the Court's case law, with a lesser "undue burden" standard previously developed by O'Connor in her dissent in Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health.[1] A legal restriction posing an undue burden was defined as one having "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." The plurality also overruled Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. 416 (1983) and Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986) [2], each of which applied "strict scrutiny" to abortion restrictions.[2]
Applying this new standard to the Pennsylvania Act under challenge, the plurality struck down the spousal notification requirement, stating that it gave too much power to husbands over their wives and would worsen situations of spousal abuse. The plurality upheld the State's 24 hour waiting period, informed consent, and parental notification requirements, holding that none constituted an undue burden.
The concurrence/dissents
William Rehnquist, Byron White, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas - the six Justices who did not join the plurality opinion - wrote or joined opinions in which they partially concurred and partially dissented from the decision.
Rehnquist and Scalia each joined the plurality in upholding the parental consent, informed consent, and waiting period laws. However, they dissented from the plurality's decision to uphold Roe v. Wade and strike down the spousal notification law, contending that Roe was incorrectly decided. Rehnquist and Scalia joined each other's concurrence/dissents, and White and Thomas, who did not write their own opinions, joined in both.
Blackmun and Stevens wrote opinions in which they approved of the plurality's preservation of Roe and rejection of the spousal notification law. They did not, however, agree with the plurality's decision to the other three laws at issue. Blackmun went further, sharply attacking and criticizing the anti-Roe bloc of the Court. Neither Blackmun's nor Stevens's opinions were joined by other justices.
[edit] See also
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 505
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)
• Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973)
• Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 (1989)
[edit] References
1. ^ Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. 416 (1983).
2. ^ "The undue burden standard is binding on lower courts, see Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977) (defining the holding of a divided Court as the view of the members of the Court who concurred on the narrowest grounds), although for stare decisis purposes, only the portion of the three-Justice opinion that garnered five votes counts as a full-fledged precedent in the Supreme Court itself." Michael C. Dorf, INCIDENTAL BURDENS ON FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1175 at Note 197.
[edit] External links
• FindLaw: PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PA. v. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833 (1992)
• Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) (full text with links to cited material)
• Case summary from the Oyez Project
[hide]
v • d • e
Abortion law (Part of the abortion series)
History & overview Case law, History of abortion law, Laws by country
Types of regulation Buffer zones, Conscience clauses, Fetal protection, Informed consent, Late-term restrictions, Parental involvement, Spousal consent
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey"
Categories: 1992 in law
Substantive due process cases
United States First Amendment case law
United States Fourteenth Amendment case law
United States Supreme Court cases
United States abortion case law
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