I am not ordinarily a "single issue" voter, but I come closest on abortion. Abortion is a human rights issue. I have voted for a "pro-choice" candidate for Congress when the other candidate was even worse on the issue. But when it comes to the Presidency, I will never vote for someone who countenances Roe v Wade precisely because Presidents nominate federal judges and Supreme Court Justices. NRO provides insight into one candidate's approach to the issue by excerpting David Freddoso on "Barack Obama & Abortion". No nonsense about "safe, legal and rare" here — he can't even bring himself to oppose "partial birth abortion" (i.e., infanticide):
The tiny newborn baby made very little noise as he struggled to breathe. He lacked the strength to cry. He had been born four months premature.
"At that age," says nurse Jill Stanek, "their lungs haven’t matured."
Stanek is the nurse who found herself cradling this baby in her hands for all of his 45-minute lifetime. He was close to ten inches long and weighed perhaps half a pound. It’s just a guess - no one had weighed or measured him at birth. No happy family had been there to welcome him into the world. No one was trying to save his life now, putting him into an incubator, giving him oxygen or nourishment. He had just been left to die.
Stanek had seen it all happen. That family had wanted a baby, but when they learned that theirs would be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. For that, they went to Christ Hospital in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.
In "induced labor" or "prostaglandin" abortion - a common procedure at the hospital - the doctor administers drugs that dilate the mother’s cervix and induce contractions, forcing a small baby out of the mother’s uterus. Most of the time, the baby dies in utero, killed by the force of the violent contractions. But it does not always work. Such abortions sometimes result in a premature baby being born alive. Sometimes the survivors live for just a few minutes, but sometimes for several hours. No one tried to save or treat them - it is hard to save someone you just mauled trying to kill. But something had to be done with them for the minutes and hours during which they struggled for air.
Stanek says her friend had been told to take this baby and leave him in a soiled utility closet. She offered to take him instead. "I couldn’t let him die alone," she says.
Stanek was horrified by this experience. This was not an abortion - it was something worse. Could it be legal to take a living and breathing person of any size, already born and outside his mother’s womb, and just leave him to die, without any thought of treatment? ....
Her attempt to change a corrupt medical practice and bring hope to defenseless infants would put her on a collision course with a state senator named Barack Obama.
On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only senator to speak in opposition to a bill that would have banned the practice of leaving premature abortion survivors to die. The bill, SB 1095, was carefully limited, its language unambiguous. It applied only to premature babies, already born alive. It stated simply that under Illinois law, "the words ‘person,’ ‘human being,’ ‘child,’ and ‘individual’ include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." ....
There was no legal conflict between this bill and the right to legal abortion, but Barack Obama was still uneasy with the idea. He and 11 other senators would vote "present" in a strategy worked out with Planned Parenthood lobbyists ("present" votes in the Illinois senate essentially count as "no" votes). The bill would pass the Senate easily with a bipartisan majority, only to die in a House committee. ....
Given Obama’s position on babies born alive, it should come as no surprise that he opposes and denounces all restrictions on every kind of abortion, including partial-birth abortions. He promised at a Planned Parenthood event in July 2007 that "the first thing" he will do as president - his top priority for the nation - is sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would erase every federal and state restriction on abortion, no matter how modest. His top priority, again, is to re-legalize partial birth abortion under all circumstances, abolish all laws on informed consent and parental notification, and eliminate all state restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortions. .... (more)
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