The Washington Post became the first major media outlet to finally acknowledge what David Freddoso and National Review have reported for weeks — that Barack Obama had not told the truth about his vote for the Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.  Jonathan Weisman gets the chronology correct and notes that Obama’s committee had added the neutrality clause that Obama claims was not part of the bill before Obama killed the legislation in his committee.  This come halfway through a balanced look at the abortion issue in general for both candidates:

Abortion foes are now accusing Obama of being an abortion-rights extremist. In recent days, the National Right to Life Committee has charged that Obama is misrepresenting his record to broaden his appeal. At issue is a measure in both Illinois and Congress called the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which defines as a protected human any life expelled from a mother. Abortion foes championed the cause when an Illinois nurse and antiabortion activist said some pre-viable fetuses were being aborted by inducing labor and then being allowed to die.

Obama, then a state senator, opposed the measure in 2001, saying it crossed the line of constitutionality and “essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a pre-viable child, or fetus.”

As a committee chairman in the state Senate in 2003, Obama supported GOP efforts to add language to the act, copied from federal legislation, clarifying that it would have no legal impact on the availability of abortions. Obama then opposed the bill’s final passage. Since then, he has said he would have backed the bill as it was written and approved almost unanimously the year before.

What Weisman mostly avoids is Obama’s attempts to mischaracterize his vote on S.1082, although the last sentence hints at it.  When this topic first arose, Obama claimed that his vote against S.1082 in 2003 resulted from a failure of the legislature to include the clause in the federal bill that would have explicitly made this neutral toward the normal practice of abortion.  The NRLC’s research proved that he lied about his vote and the status of the bill.  When confronted by CBN’s David Brody, he called his critics liars instead, but within 24 hours his campaign had to go into full retreat.

As Allahpundit noted last night, Team Obama has shifted to an arcane explanation of the difference between the application of the same bill at the federal and state levels, which Weisman also reports:

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.

Obama’s campaign still lies.  The bill very clearly stated, even without the neutrality clause, that it only applied to infants born alive, regardless of the circumstances of their births.  Once born alive, the medical provider had a duty to provide normal, life-supporting care to the infant.  It had nothing to do with abortion procedures (unfortunately), and as Obama himself claimed at first, the neutrality clause removed all ambiguity about this by explicitly stating that it had no impact on abortion procedures.

But more to the point, Obama flat-out lied about his record.  He opposed a bill that would have stopped the ongoing practice of infanticide in Illinois facilities such as Christ Hospitals.  When first asked about this bill, Obama tried to hide his record by intentionally mischaracterizing the legislation and his reasons for opposing it.  He didn’t talk at the time about the nuances of legal language at the state level — he said that the bill didn’t contain the neutrality clause that would have protected abortion on demand.

Obama cannot hide his radical nature for very much longer.  With the Washington Post reporting this story, the truth about Obama’s protection of infanticide and Obama’s dishonesty on the topic will soon reach wide distribution.