Obama’s support for infanticide breaks into mainstream media
…

Why I’m going to a Jim Ryan fundraiser tonight

Monday, September 16, 2002

By Jill Stanek (Jill@illinoisleader.com )

I thought after the primary I would just ignore the governor’s race this year. My guy, Patrick O’Malley, didn’t win and I had a big problem with the guy the Republicans of Illinois picked, Jim Ryan.

I also had a big problem with conservative leaders and groups that I thought should have supported O’Malley during the primary but either didn’t or put their feet in both camps to hedge their bets. I blamed them for O’Malley’s loss.

I thought to myself, “I can’t support Ryan. To do so would be to compromise. To do so would be to say that everything I said about him during the primary was a lie.”

And as the scandal of corruption within the Republican Party was exposed, I felt somewhat vindicated and also thought, “I’ll just let the Party and those groups suffer the consequences of their actions.”

The problem I had with Jim Ryan was the way he handled live birth abortion at Christ Hospital. Rather, how he didn’t handle it. He didn’t do anything. He punted the politically volatile football to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

This can now be confirmed as true due to information just received this past Friday from Attorney General Jim Ryan’s office via the Freedom of Information Act, which makes this piece even harder to write.

The AG’s office admits it never opened an investigation of Christ Hospital. There is no investigation number. There is no paperwork.

And strangely, the AG refuses to hand over any opinion he may have rendered on the two-part constitutional question, “Is a live aborted baby a legal person, and if so, is it legal for Christ Hospital to leave live aborted babies to die?” The AG’s opinion is ever more important now that the federal Born Alive bill is law, because we need to know the AG’s thinking so as to begin enforcing this law in Illinois.

I think the reason the AG refuses to hand over its opinion is because there is no opinion. Contrary to FOIA law, a law that the AG himself helped write, the FOIA response took two months, three certified letters, and several phone calls to obtain from the AG’s office.

So, I think it will be awhile, or maybe never, before we find out what the highest legal official in the State of Illinois was thinking when his office said on July 19, 2000, “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.”

“In his book The Case Against Barack Obama, author David Freddoso misrepresents findings by the Illinois state government to claim that a statement by Sen. Barack Obama explaining his opposition to a bill that amended the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975 was “not true.” Claiming that Obama’s assertion — that “measures mandat[ing] lifesaving measures for premature babies” were “already the law” in Illinois — was false, Freddoso falsely asserts that the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and a July 2000 letter from Illinois’ then-Attorney General Jim Ryan’s office refute Obama’s statement. They do not; indeed, a reported statement by IDPH supports it.

The July 2000 letter was a response from Ryan’s office 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. In a letter on Ryan’s letterhead, chief deputy attorney general Carole R. Doris wrote in part:

On December 6, IDPH provided this office with its investigative report and advised us that IDPH’s internal review did not indicate [emphasis added] 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 — IDPH reportedly concluded that if the hospital had done what Stanek alleged, its actions would have been illegal under existing law. (The word “indicate” is in italics above because in his quotation of the letter, Freddoso substitutes the word “include” for the word “indicate.”)

In an August 2004 email discussion with Stanek, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn quoted IDPH spokesman Tom Shafer stating, apparently in reference to Stanek and another nurse, Allison Baker: “[W]hat they were alleging were violations of existing law. … We took (the allegations) very seriously.” Zorn wrote further: “Shafer told me that the 1999 investigation reviewed logs, personnel files and medical records. It concluded, ‘The allegation that infants were allowed to expire in a utility room could not be substantiated (and) all staff interviewed denied that any infant was ever left alone.’ “

“Obama aides acknowledged yesterday that the wording of the state and federal bills was virtually identical. But, they added, the impact of a state law is different, because detailed abortion procedures and regulations are governed by states. Johnson and others are oversimplifying the situation, aides said.

“They have not been telling the truth,” Obama told the Christian Broadcasting Network in response to a question on the matter. “And I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying.”

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”

baby = STD

get that? Abortion/Murderer is an acceptable cure to to get rid of babies babies/STD’s.

kinda sick to equate human babies to STD’s, also Obama wanted to treat “born alive babies” as “medical waste” and left to die.

Obama total POS.

I really doubt it was his idea because why go into politics when you have a nice collage teaching job?

jmarcure on August 20, 2008 at 8:00 AM

Obama was an art teacher!?

The leftists, including Al Burack, are classic sociopathic mass murderers, whining about how they are, in fact, the real victims. For me, they are worse than any Communist, Nazi or Muslim mass murderer. . . .

Aristotle on August 20, 2008 at 7:35 AM

Check the stats. You’ll find the pro-choice movement has actually killed more people than Hitler did.

I really doubt it was his idea because why go into politics when you have a nice collage teaching job?

jmarcure on August 20, 2008 at 8:00 AM

J, if you are going to mention teaching in “collage,” first learn how to spell it. Your point will not be taken seriously otherwise.

David Freddoso wrote this at NRO. The article Life with Obama: Abortion champion.was linked to here the last few days. He writes of Jill Stanek’s encounter with the aborted baby born alive at Christ Church Hospital:

Hospital officials dismissed Stanek’s concerns. She then approached the Republican attorney general of Illinois, Jim Ryan, who issued a finding several months later that Christ Hospital was doing nothing illegal under the laws of Illinois. Doctors had no ethical or legal obligation to treat these premature babies. They had passed the bright line of birth that had effectively limited the right to life since the Roe v. Wade decision, but under the law they were non-persons.

We know that the Illinois Medical Association also opposed the new law, so there must have been something in it (probably the fact that it applied at all times through pregnancy) that made doctors think it was overreaching.

Do you guys really think he supported Killing babies

tomas on August 20, 2008 at 8:48 AM

What other possible explanation could there be? Even after hearing the Jill Stanek’s heart-wrenching testimony about how she cradled the baby in her arms for its last 45 minutes of breath–he STILL had no problem whatsoever stuffing it in a utility closed to die.

Only yesterday has the Obama campaign finally, in desperation, gotten close to telling the truth about Obama’s position. In its latest apologia, the campaign isolates the language it found so objectionable in the Illinois bill. “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.” The campaign calls this “Language Clearly Threatening Roe.”

Jill Stanek has another column up titled Obama’s “fact sheet” changes in which she discusses this point: (her emphasis)

One added point. Note the heading, “Language Clearly Threatening Roe.”

“Clearly threatening Roe”? Then explain this, Senator Obama. Even before the hyped “neutrality clause” was added, the U.S. House voted 380-15 in September 2000 for this version, you know, the one “clearly threatening Roe.” Leading pro-abort Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) stated at the time, according to World magazine:

The purpose of this bill is only to get the pro-choice members to vote against it so they can slander us and say we are for infanticide. That’s why I voted for it in committee, and that’s why we will vote for it on the floor.

Obama just wasn’t so smart.