Sen. Obama responds to ‘neutrality clause’ claims during interview

Aug 17, 2008 / 10:09 am

Last week, the National Right to Life Committee published evidence showing that Senator Barack Obama has misrepresented his position on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.  In an interview last night, Obama gave a “heated” response to the allegations stating that this is “a situation where folks are lying.”

Sen. Barack Obama has adamantly stated that he opposed the passage of an Illinois law that would protect infants who survive an abortion on the grounds that it lacked a “neutrality clause.”  However, last week his explanation was undermined when the National Right to Life Committee published evidence proving that a neutrality clause had in fact been added to the Illinois bill by the same Obama-chaired state Senate committee which quickly voted down the amended bill.

The “neutrality clause” was added to state that the bill did not express judgment about the legal status of a human being prior to birth – and could therefore not be used to undermine Roe v. Wade.

Christian Broadcasting News Senior National Correspondent, Dan Brody, gave Senator Barack Obama an opportunity to respond to claims from the National Right to Life Committee.  In the interview, Brody began by asking Obama to clarify his position on the bill while in the Illinois Senate.  “…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 responded, “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. By the way, we also had a bill, a law already in place in Illinois that insured life saving treatment was given to infants.”

“So for people to suggest that I and the Illinois medical society, so Illinois doctors were somehow in favor of withholding life saving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous. It defies commonsense and it defies imagination and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive and it's an example of the kind of politics that we have to get beyond. It's one thing for people to disagree with me about the issue of choice, it's another thing for people to out and out misrepresent my positions repeatedly, even after they know that they're wrong. And that's what's been happening.”

Legislative Director for Wisconsin Right to Life, Susan Armacost responded on Monday saying, "Obama was caught red-handed in his attempt to deceive the American people when NRLC released these documents."

She continued, "This issue is not going to go away, Obama is still blatantly trying to cover up his infanticide votes and the American people deserve to know the truth."