Colmes offers excuse for Obama's opposition to Born Alive

On August 20, 2008, Alan Colmes attempted to derail the fact that Barack Obama voted against the same legislation on the state level that passed overwhelmingly on the federal level to provide legal protection to newborn babies no matter what gestational age at birth or reason for birth, i.e., abortion.

Colmes maintained a law was already in place.

But as Ramesh Ponnuru well explained in an August 20 NRO column:

"The main supposed omission: 'What Senator Obama's attackers don't tell you is that existing Illinois law already requires doctors to provide medical care in the very rare case that babies are born alive during abortions.' The reason the NRLC didn't include that information is that it is incorrect. Illinois law has rules — loophole-ridden rules, but rules — requiring treatment of babies who have 'sustainable survivability.' If an attempted abortion of a pre-viable fetus results in a live birth, the law did not protect the infant. Nurse Jill Stanek said that at her hospital 'abortions' were repeatedly performed by inducing the live birth of a pre-viable fetus and then leaving it to die. When she made her report, the attorney general said that no law had been broken. That's why legislators proposed a bill to fill the gap."

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