Olbermann spins Obama's opposition to IL's Born Alive Act

On September 2, 2008, MSNBC's Chris Matthews engaged in a lengthy discussion with Republican NM Congresswoman Heather Wilson about Barack Obama's opposition as state senator to IL's Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

Afterward, Keith Olbermann quickly jumped in to carry water for Obama by misstating that Obama opposed the legislation because there was already a law in place, which was ridiculous.

1. IL pro-life Republican Attorney General Jim Ryan determined shelving babies to die in hospital soiled utility rooms was not illegal. See letter here: http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/08/did_il_abortion.html

2. IL's Born Alive Infants Protection Act finally passed in the Democrat controlled IL General Assembly 6 months after Obama left for the US Senate, followed by IL's pro-abortion Gov. Rod Blagojevich signing it into law. See law and votes here: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=984&GAID=8&DocT...

3. Quoting National Right to Life on the IL abortion law itself (http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html):

Obama explained in 2001, and has never recanted, that he opposed the Illinois BAIPA because it declared a "previable fetus" to be a legal person -- even though the bill only did so if the baby had achieved "complete expulsion or extraction from its mother." (Obama's statements are quoted verbatim further on in this white paper.) The old Illinois law in question (720 ILCS 510.6) covered only situations where an abortionist declares before the abortion that there was "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb."

Humans are often born alive a month or more before they reach the point where such "sustained survival" -- that is, long-term survival -- is likely or possible (which is often called the point of "viability").

The old Illinois law has no bearing on many of the induced-labor abortions about which the nurses testified before the committees in Congress and the Illinois state legislature, because many of them were performed on unborn humans who were capable of being born alive, and who often were born alive, but who were not old enough to have a "reasonable likelihood of sustained survival... outside the womb."

Even with respect to "viable" infants, the old law is ridden with loopholes. It does not apply except when the abortionist himself declares that there is "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb."

This already-weak law was further weakened by a lengthy consent decree issued by a federal court in 1993, which among other things permanently prohibits authorities from enforcing the law's definitions of "born alive," "live born," and "live birth."

On April 4, 2002, Obama spoke on the Illinois Senate floor against a bill (SB 1663 -- which was not the BAIPA) that would have more strictly defined the circumstances under which the presence of a second physician (to care for a live-born baby) would be required; Obama argued that this would "burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion . . . [I]t's important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births."

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