Sat 23 Aug 2008
Biden quotes
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Myths and falsehoods regarding Obama’s votes on “born alive” bills
In reporting on abortion-rights opponents’ criticism of Sen. Barack Obama’s opposition as an Illinois state senator to bills seeking to amend the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975, the media have promoted numerous myths and falsehoods about Obama and the legislation. In several instances, the media have simply repeated false accusations — or made the accusations themselves — that Obama’s opposition amounted to support for infanticide. For example, on the August 18 edition of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh claimed that buy hytrin Obama “believes it is proper to kill a baby that has survived an abortion,” while right-wing pundit Ann Coulter said that Obama “wants the doctors … chasing it through the delivery room to make sure it gets killed.” Further, author Jerome Corsi claimed that “[e]ven if a child was born, he said the woman still had the right to kill the child in an abortion,” and Oregonian associate editor David Reinhard wrote that Obama’s opposition was “enabling infanticide.” In fact, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, Obama and other opponents said the bill posed a threat to abortion rights and was unnecessary because, they said, Illinois law already prohibited the conduct supposedly addressed by the bill.
Other myths and falsehoods that the media have promoted include the following:
MYTH: IL attorney general’s letter contradicts Obama’s explanation for opposing the legislation
Media figures have misrepresented findings by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the office of Illinois’ then-Attorney General Jim Ryan to claim that Obama’s assertion that Illinois law already “mandate[d] lifesaving measures for premature babies” was false. But the attorney general’s letter in no way undermines Obama’s statement. Moreover, tasked by the state attorney general with investigating allegations that fetuses surviving abortions at an Illinois hospital were not receiving medical care, the IDPH reportedly said, consistent with Obama’s statement, that had the allegations proved true, the alleged conduct would have been illegal.
In his book The Case Against Barack Obama, author David Freddoso writes that a July 2000 letter from Ryan’s office refutes Obama’s statement. The letter was a response to Concerned Women for America regarding a complaint by nurse Jill Stanek, who claimed that fetuses that were born alive at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, were abandoned without treatment, including in a soiled utility room. Under Ryan’s letterhead, chief deputy attorney general Carole R. Doris wrote, in part:
On December 6, 1999, IDPH provided this office with its investigative report and advised us that IDPH’s internal review did not indicate a violation of the Hospital Licensing Act or the Vital Records Act.
No other allegations or medical evidence to support any statutory violation (including the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act about which you inquired) were referred to our office by the Department for prosecution.
…
While we are deeply respectful of your serious concerns about the practices and methods of abortions at this hospital, we have concluded that there is no basis for legal action by this office against the Hospital or its employees, agents or staff at this time.
From that letter, Freddoso concludes that the state found that “[i]n leaving born babies to die without treatment, Christ Hospital was doing nothing illegal under the laws of Illinois.” But the state’s conclusions regarding the law were reportedly the opposite of what Freddoso claims buy diflucan online; IDPH reportedly concluded that if the hospital had done what Stanek alleged, its
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