The presumptive Democratic nominee responded sharply in an interview Saturday night with the Christian Broadcast Network, saying anti-abortion groups were "lying" about his record.
"They have not been telling the truth," Mr. Obama said. "And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."
He added that it was "ridiculous" to suggest he had ever supported withholding lifesaving treatment for an infant. "It defies common sense and it defies imagination, and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive," he said in the CBN interview.
At issue is the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a bill in the Illinois state Senate that sought to protect against bungled abortions by requiring that a fetus that survived an abortion be defined as a person. Fearing that the legislation could be interpreted more broadly to protect fetuses that were not yet viable — thus threatening Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates pushed for an amendment that explicitly limited the scope of the bill to infants "born alive."
"Nothing in this section," the added sentence reads, "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this section." A federal version with that added clause passed Congress unanimously in 2002, with the support of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kennedy, among others. Mr. Obama said in 2004 and again on Saturday that he would have supported the federal version.
During the Democratic primary, Mrs. Clinton's campaign criticized Mr. Obama for voting "present" — instead of "no" — on the "Born Alive" bill in Illinois, which did not contain a provision protecting the Roe v. Wade decision.
The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, voted against a "Born Alive" bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.
The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.
Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported "was not the bill that was presented at the state level." (Emphasis added.)
Obama's first move was to lie, and to accuse truth-telling critics of lying. He lies a lot. See here, here, and here.
(Hat tips: Jill Stanek & K.J. Lopez.)
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