When it comes to the most significant moral issues of our time, no one should be surprised by immoral actions of modern liberals. You can be saddened, shocked, angry, disgusted, and the like, but you should not be surprised.  This is certainly true when it comes to the issue of even infanticide.

For decades, Democrats have dehumanized the unborn and argued against protecting the most innocent and helpless among us, even when they escaped death in their mothers' wombs.  In order to further their wicked sexual agenda, Democrats at the highest levels have taken some of the most radically gruesome views of life in the womb.  No less than Barack Obama took a position on children who survived abortion that can be described only as infanticide.

Obama, while a member of the Illinois state Senate, opposed multiple versions of an Illinois bill that mirrored the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA).  According to National Right to Life, BAIPA was essentially "a simple two-paragraph proposal – [that] established ... for all federal law purposes, any baby who was entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who showed any of the specified signs of life, was to be regarded as a legal person for however long he or she lived, and that this applied whether or not the birth was the result of an abortion or of spontaneous premature labor."

In 2000, the original BAIPA was passed by the U.S. House by a vote of 380 to 15.  This occurred in spite of opposition by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL).  Even staunch pro-abortion leaders, such as Jerrold Nadler, ignored the NARAL position and supported BAIPA.  This version of BAIPA was later killed in the Senate by an objection to unanimous consent.

In 2001, the Illinois Legislature took up a bill patterned after the federal BAIPA.  Obama voted against this bill in committee.  On the floor of the Illinois Senate, he later gave the only speech against the bill, saying, "I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."  Because, of course, we need the "equal protection clause" to tell us we shouldn't kill our children.

Obama finally, and "boldly," voted "present" on the bill, which had the same effect as voting "no."  The bill passed the Illinois Senate but died in a House committee.  The scene pretty much repeated itself in 2002, this time with Obama voting "no."

In 2002, a "neutrality clause" was added to the federal BAIPA.  This clause basically said that, as far as federal law was concerned, legal protection could not be conferred upon a human being prior to being "born alive."  This effectively protected Roe.  The bill unanimously passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Bush in 2002.

Obama is on the record saying he would have supported the Illinois bill had it contained the neutrality clause.  In October of 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported, "Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act[.]"  However, in 2003, the exact language of the federal neutrality clause was added to the Illinois bill, making it virtually identical to the federal BAIPA.  In March of 2003, Obama chaired an Illinois Senate committee and led the Democrats on that committee to kill the amended bill.

In attempting to blunt the extremism of his abortion record, Obama stated time and again that the lack of a neutrality clause was all that was preventing him from supporting the Illinois bill.  When he was called out on the matter, Obama accused individuals and institutions of lying about his record.  His campaign later had to admit that his critics were correct about his voting record.

Obama's radical – evil – position on infants born alive was widely reported on in the pro-life media.  There was even audio of him making his case!  Obama's position was described as infanticide prior to his presidential re-election bid in 2012.  He not only won two presidential elections with such evil positions on life, but was so emboldened that once Obamacare became the law of the land, then President Obama instructed his Department of Health and Human Services to issue its notorious contraception and abortifacient mandate.

As David French noted at the time, "[t]his is who Barack Obama is.  There is no reason to be surprised by this.  He is not being pulled to extremes by his base – he is the one doing the pulling."  Obama pulled, and along came New York governor Mario Cuomo, Virginia governor Ralph Northam, and Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo.  On infanticide, each of these Democrat governors has picked up where Obama left off.

It seems clear that what immoral Democrats in New York passed and what immoral democrats in Virginia and Rhode Island are proposing all violate the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act.  However, as Operation Rescue points out:

Some have postulated that with New York's new abortion law, crimes committed by late-term abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell will now be legal in New York.  He was convicted of first-degree murder on three counts of snipping the spinal cords of living newborns who survived abortions at his Philadelphia "House of Horrors" clinic.

That may well be the case.

The Federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act of 2002 mandates that babies born alive during abortions must be cared for as patients.  Unfortunately, that act has no enforcement clause, meaning there is no criminal or civil penalty for violating it.  Even Kermit Gosnell could not be charged with breaking that law.

The proposed Rhode Island bill, co-sponsored by state senator Gayle L. Goldin and Rep. Edith H. Ajello, would, as LifeNews notes, "strip away even minor, common-sense abortion regulations."  LifeNews continues:

The bill appears to allow restrictions for late-term abortions, but it adds a broad "health" exception for abortions after viability. The exception would allow women to abort unborn babies up to nine months of pregnancy for basically any "health" reason, including "age, economic, social and emotional factors," a definition given by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Doe v. Bolton.

Ajello described protections for unborn babies as "insidiously restrictive, harmful and patriarchal reproductive laws." Her bill would even repeal the state partial-birth abortion ban and fetal homicide law, which provides justice to pregnant mothers whose unborn babies are killed by abusive partners, drunken drivers or others whose illegal actions cause the death of the unborn baby.

Do you remember our partial-birth abortion debate?  With 281 House votes (65%), including 63 Democrats, and 64 Senate votes, including 17 Democrats, and President Bush's signature, in 2003, the federal partial-birth abortion ban became law.  Twice Bill Clinton vetoed similar bills, and while a partial-birth abortion ban was finally being passed at the federal level, state senator Barack Obama was opposing the Illinois version.

When he arrived in the U.S. Senate, Obama denounced the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to uphold the ban.  In the months prior to the 2008 U.S. presidential election, then-candidate Barack Obama said, "The first thing I'll do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)."  FOCA, as co-sponsor Barbara Boxer described it, "supersedes any law, regulation or local ordinance that impinges on a woman's right to choose."

 As Rich Lowry described FOCA in Politico:

The act would enshrine in federal law a right to abortion more far-reaching than in Roe v. Wade and eliminate basically all federal and state-level restrictions on abortion.  This isn't a point its supporters contest; it's one they brag about.  The National Organization for Women says it would "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies."

Look for the next Democrat nominee for POTUS to make a pledge similar to Obama's.  Whether Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Andrew Cuomo, or another, it seems that all of the candidates seeking to replace Barack Obama at the head of the Democratic Party will continue his wicked war on the unborn.

Trevor Grant Thomas: At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America.
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com