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Better take a second look at Obama's qualifications

Letter to the Editor

By The Montana Standard Staff - 10/15/2008

A recent letter questioned Sarah Palin's qualifications to be vice president. She is a well-liked governor; she doesn't please everyone. Think Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan.

Obama's qualifications: Ivy League education, community organizer, friend of domestic terrorists, ineffective legislator. Obama is part of the East Coast elite culture that allows him to belittle gun ownership and religion when talking to rich San Francisco swells but lets him say something completely different to the folks in rural America. How he justifies this kind of irrational thinking should give us second thoughts.

When Obama was in the Illinois Senate, Chicago nurse Jill Stanek reported that the hospital where she worked wouldn't care for children born alive from botched abortions. Instead, the infants were allowed to die in soiled linen rooms. How did Obama respond when state Sen. Patrick O'Malley introduced legislation to prevent infanticide in Illinois?

O'Malley's proposal simply said a baby alive after "complete expulsion or extraction from its mother" would be considered a "‘person, ‘human being,' ‘child' and ‘individual'" and receive the same care as other premature babies.

On March 31, 2001, the bill came up in the Illinois Senate. Obama was the only one who spoke against it. He saw a problem with calling abortion survivors "persons." Instead, he defined the infant survivor as a "pre-viable fetus" that was just "temporarily alive." No equal care. By definition, however, a born baby cannot be a "fetus" and all of us are "temporarily alive." We all know the meaning of "child" and "alive." If Obama can rationalize his way around infanticide, imagine how he might interpret gun rights, national security, or taxation.

In 2002, Congress responded to Stanek's testimony and passed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, guaranteeing equal care for abortion survivors everywhere, including Illinois. The vote in the Senate was unanimous.

Cort Freeman 2950 Bayard St.

Butte


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