Obama: Pro-abortion?

In a lengthy post on Obama’s position on abortion, Randy Alcorn asks an important question of Christians who are voting for Obama because they believe there will be fewer abortions if he becomes President:

Now, my question to those prolife Christians who claim there will ultimately be fewer abortions if Obama is elected than if McCain is elected is this: what do you know that those most dedicated to defending abortion rights AND those most committed to fighting abortion do not know?

It’s a good question.  Alcorn successfully challenges the notion that there will be fewer abortions under an Obama Presidency and leaves Christians with the uncomfortable fact that Barack Obama intends to actively hinder pro-lifers from making our case to women who are considering abortion:

Late last year, RHrealitycheck.org, a prominent pro-abortion advocacy website, submitted in writing the following question to the Obama campaign (as part of a candidate questionnaire): “Does Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers?”

The Obama campaign response was short, but it speaks volumes: “No.”

Taxpayer money, however, will continue to support Planned Parenthood, which happens to be the largest abortion provider in the country.  Furthermore, Obama intends to make us directly pay for those abortions by repealing the Hyde Amendment, which for decades has blocked Federal funding of abortion.

In How can Christians support Obama? I described Obama’s refusal to provide for medical care for infants who live through botched abortions. In Randy Alcorn, Obama, and Abortion I went to the next level – his support for late term and partial birth abortions where the baby could easily live if permitted to do so. I made the case that the goal of abortions in those circumstances is not to end the pregnancy, which could easily be done in such a way as to permit the baby to live, but to kill a viable baby.

Gene Veith adresses the question: How pro-abortion is Obama? It’s not just repealing the Hyde Amendment and his promise to sign FOCA, and stopping funding for the crisis pregnancy centers which frequently provide free ultrasounds so women can see the baby, hear the heartbeat, and hear about real alternatives to abortion.  He excerpts this excellent article by

But it gets even worse. Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama has opposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child. This legislation would not make a single abortion illegal. It simply seeks to make it easier for pregnant women to make the choice not to abort their babies. Here is a concrete test of whether Obama is ”pro-choice” rather than pro-abortion. He flunked.

It gets still worse.  Senator Obama supported the “clone and kill” bill. But it doesn’t end there.

Can it get still worse? Yes.

Decent people of every persuasion hold out the increasingly realistic hope of resolving the moral issue surrounding embryonic stem-cell research by developing methods to produce the exact equivalent of embryonic stem cells without using (or producing) embryos. But when a bill was introduced in the United States Senate to put a modest amount of federal money into research to develop these methods, Barack Obama was one of the few senators who opposed it. … It is as if Obama is opposed to stem-cell research unless it involves killing human embryos.

So what about Obama’s pro-life Christian supporters?

They typically do not deny the facts I have reported. They could not; each one is a matter of public record. But despite Obama’s injustices against the most vulnerable human beings, and despite the extraordinary support he receives from the industry that profits from killing the unborn (which should be a good indicator of where he stands), some Obama supporters insist that he is the better candidate from the pro-life point of view.

They say that his economic and social policies would so diminish the demand for abortion that the overall number would actually go down-despite the federal subsidizing of abortion and the elimination of hundreds of pro-life laws. The way to save lots of unborn babies, they say, is to vote for the pro-abortion-oops! ”pro-choice”-candidate. They tell us not to worry that Obama opposes the Hyde Amendment, the Mexico City Policy (against funding abortion abroad), parental consent and notification laws, conscience protections, and the funding of alternatives to embryo-destructive research. They ask us to look past his support for Roe v. Wade, the Freedom of Choice Act, partial-birth abortion, and human cloning and embryo-killing. An Obama presidency, they insist, means less killing of the unborn.

This is delusional.

I agree. A more realistic and honest approach is simply to say, “Yes, I realize that he is a rabid abortion supporter and that more babies will be killed in an Obama presidency than a McCain presidency.  But other issues are more important to me so I’m voting for him anyway.”

In a related note, Ladies for Life is a new blog recommended by Foxfier.