Obama’s ship is taking on water over the abortion issue — his all-abortion, all-the-time position is considerably out of the mainstream view of Americans. His refusal to give botched aborted babies surviving the procedure medical care (instead of discarding them to die) when it came for a vote — a proposal so non-controversial even Ted Kennedy and Clinton supported it — defies explanation (as Gianna Jessen notes, she herself survived a botched abortion, and Obama’s position would deny her the medical care to save her life); no amount of nuance or spin can change the facts — Obama voted against medical care for children.

The record here is very, very clear. Obama initially said that he opposed the bill in Illinois because it didn’t have the “neutrality clause” included in the federal version of the legislation. As documentation proved, Obama voted against it even with the neutrality clause added. The Obama campaign finally acknowledged that Obama had lied about his position a month ago. Why? Because it would have actually forced doctors to provide care for live infants from abortions — or in other words, it would have worked.

If you’re interested, visit Jill Stanek’s site, a nurse in the Chicago area who witnessed botched aborted babies discarded to die — it’s not an academic discussion, the problem is real, and Obama voted (multiple times) to deny those children medical care — even as the U.S. Senate approved an identical bill 98-0.

No amount of “change” spin can alter the facts — Obama’s votes indicate he’d deny medical care for children after they’re born. The question nobody asks him is simple — if it’s acceptable to kill a baby after it’s born and call it abortion, at what age does the child get bestowed constitutional rights? Can they be “aborted” until 18? Do children count less than other people? When do they get basic human rights? For how long can they be aborted after being born before it becomes a crime? When asked, he provided his (in)famous “above my pay grade” response, which is strange considering he’s running for leader of the country.

It’s not a religious issue, or medical issue, it’s a legal issue he is (supposed) to be qualified to answer. If he can’t answer a legal question, he’s not qualified to run the country. For Obama, the question of when a child gets human rights isn’t answered — it certainly isn’t at birth, but at some mysterious point later — how later he’s not saying.

That’s certainly “change” from mainstream America, unless you believe allowing infants to die in the trash can remotely represents most people’s views. But there’s another view of the issue, and it’s eloquently presented by Paul Harvey in his book “The Rest of the Story” — a good read for lots of reasons if you have time.

When rape results in pregnancy, or when giving birth might cost the mother’s life, few women would fail to consider as an alternative: Abortion.

[…]

Your first expectant mother is Caterina. Caterina is unmarried, obviously in her teens, obviously poor. You ask her age, and she tells you, and at once you realize she has overstated her years by one or two or three.

Caterina is in the first trimester of her pregnancy.

You ask if she has been pregnant before.

Caterina shakes her head.

Studying her, you wonder.

You inquire of her general health; no problems, she says.

And the health of the father?

Caterina shrugs; her eyes fall.

She has lost contact with the father of her unborn child. All she knows is he was twenty-three, a lawyer or a notary or something like that. He lives nearby, she thinks; she is not sure. The affair was over quickly, little more than a one-night stand. No child was expected–nor now is wanted.

What Doctor, is your advice?

Later the same day, you are consulted by a second expectant mother.

Her name is Klara. Klara is twenty-eight, married three years, the wife of a government worker; she has the look of a woman accustomed to anguish.

Concerned for the ultimate health of her unborn, Klara explains that for each year of her marriage she has had a child–and each has died; the first within thirty-one months, the second within sixteen months, the third within several days.

[…]

So what, Doctor, is your advice?

In addition to all immediate considerations–physical, moral, religious–the dilemma of whether to terminate a pregnancy is a philosophical question:

Might this life, if left to live, affect the consciousness or even the destiny of mankind?

Yet if the profundity of this question is diminished by the balance which governs all life, there is evidence in the two true stories you have just heard: the unwed mother with unwanted child; the married mother with the graves of three infants behind her.

For if you, as the hypothetical physician, have opted in both cases for abortion–then you have respectively denied the world the multifaceted genius of Leonardo da Vinci–and spared humanity the terror of Adolf Hitler.

They are THE REST OF THE STORY.

The average person wants to keep abortion legal, but ban partial-birth abortion, and certainly wouldn’t want living babies discarded as trash to die. Yet Obama is so extreme on abortion he voted against bills even Kennedy and Clinton supported.

That’s change nobody believes in.