Why I Won’t Vote For Sen. Obama

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Wednesday - October 29, 2008

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Two weeks ago in Kalihi I spoke to a group, Joshua Generation, and was asked by an audience member what is the most important reason I don’t support Barack Obama.

I had to think. There are many: higher taxes (94 Senate votes to raise taxes), inexperience, big promises with huge costs and his plan to redistribute wealth.

I thought about his relationships, who he was philosophically and politically comfortable with - before running for president: his 20-year pastor/mentor, Jeremiah Wright, who said, “God damn America,” that Hillary Clinton was part of the rich, white American conspiracy responsible for infecting blacks with the AIDs virus. Wright called Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “Condamnesia” for selling out to white America and awarded anti-Semite Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan the Trumpeter Award, saying he “truly epitomized greatness” - a man who calls whites “blue-eyed devils,” Jews “bloodsuckers,” Hitler a “very great man” and Obama “Messiah.”

Troubling are Obama’s friendships with former, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and with convicted felon Tony Rezko who, even while under indictment, helped the Obamas purchase property under shady circumstances. (Wikipedia provides information on Rezko, his partner Nadhmi Auichi convicted of fraud in France, and Obama.)

Then, I remembered what Hawaii’s Bryan Clay, Olympic decathalon winner, said in his Republican National Convention speech, “Whether we’re a decathalete or a politician, we must all stay true to our principles.”

I knew the answer to the question. Barack Obama fought against saving the lives of abortion survivors. This is, above all else, why I could not vote for him.

In the Illinois Senate, Obama fought vigorously against those survivors by opposing the state bill equivalent to the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA). Records prove he presided over a 2003 committee meeting that amended the Illinois bill to make it virtually identical to the federal bill - then voted against the amended bill anyway. Even NARAL was unopposed to the bill that every U.S. senator voted for.

In an August CNN/CBN interview with reporter David Brody, Obama said, “I hate to say that people are lying, but here’s a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported, which was to say that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion.”

Later, Obama’s campaign staff admitted to The New York Sun that Obama “had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate.” Obama is the one who lied.

Jill Stanek is the registered labor and delivery nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., who, in 1999, cradled the baby boy abortion survivor for 45 minutes before he died. She learned that “fully formed, but tiny” babies were being aborted alive, then left to die in a dirty utility room, also finding that 10 to 20 percent of babies aborted there survived the abortion. She testified under oath before Obama.

In the Illinois Senate transcript, Obama argues against the bill, “By adding the extra doctor called to the emergency it is really designed to burden the original decision of the woman.”

I used to be pro-choice and have made all the arguments prochoicers make, but have changed my stand in recent years. Since doing mission work with orphans in Africa, more than 20 years advocating for the neo-natal intensive care unit at Kapiolani Medical Center, and as my spiritual faith deepens, I believe innocent babies, in-utero or out, must be protected, loved.

I watched my own grandbaby, Emma, struggle her way down the birth canal and thrust her tiny head out from the safety of her mother’s womb. A miracle. At Kapiolani, preemies weighing 2 pounds, connected to tubes and breathing machines, fight to live and later become scholars, athletes, even pre-med students. In Africa, I’ve seen newborns who’d been thrown down pit latrines survive and become bright schoolchildren.

I didn’t know there was anyone alive who’d survived an abortion, but I heard Gianna Gessen on the radio telling of her joyful life despite near death, when her mother chose to abort her at 7 1/2 months in Los Angeles 31 years ago. Fortunately, the abortion doctor was late arriving and a nurse got her to a neo-natal intensive care unit. Oxygen deprivation during the 18-hour abortion procedure using drugs to induce labor caused her cerebral palsy. A grateful Gianna says she would’ve “died of strangulation, suffocation or leaving me there to die.” She now runs marathons.

Forty million abortions have been performed since Roe v Wade. How many do you think left a survivor dying in a closet?

A baby alive outside the womb is a human being. Letting it die is infanticide.