Farewell to the Obamagelicals?

Sen. Obama will need to address the core anxieties that have arisen, some because of misleading attacks and others because of his own decisions.

Why? Why does he need moderate Evangelicals to win?

Mr. Waldman you may be right that some Evangelicals will go back to the Republican side because Palin is a Pentecostal and is a very vocal and forceful personality, using her Beauty Contest skills of the past, which serve her very well in this campaign of the Republicans at this point. The sad thing is that this is not a race for a place in a Church or a Religious MegaChurch on TV that they are campaigning for; it's for the United States President that will have to turn many bad decisions around that have been made in the past presidency and his Republican Administration that include our economy, our health care, our collapsing infrastructure, and our very sad Foreign relations with other countries in the world, a war that is lasting too long, and killing our youth and men and women in their prime. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have the abilities to bring America back to its feet again. John McCain and Sarah Palin do not have what it takes to do this. They are exciting and have charisma, and say what the Religious Right wants them to, but they would be a big mistake.

Sarah Palin should be a true Christian mom and be HOME where all of her 5 babies + upcoming grandbaby need her so desperately. Watching her kids' forced smiles on TV make me cringe, and when I think about how much her youngest needs her and won't have her, it makes me cry. She's probably not even nursing this poor child. A pathetic and sad situation is all it is to me. McCain will absolutely not get my vote because of this situation he's created, and Palin is just another bad mommy parading around like a Christian. I will pray for her to see the damage she's inflicted on her family.

I am having a very hard time with any true Christian voting for Obama. At least for saying he is a Christian. The definition as I understand it, of a Christian believes in Jesus Christ as the ONLY way to salvation, to be able to enter heaven. According to Sen. Obama, others can enter also through their own beliefs -- Muslim, Buddisim, Hinduism, etc. To me that is not a true Christian.

I am one evangelical who will vote Democrat because it is clear McCain is only using Palin as a palliative to garner the Christian vote. He consistently will not own up to understanding the importance of a faith, whereas Obama has tried. This may be largely due to the strongman pressures put on him by Christian influentials, especially those who have publicly said they would not vote for him. Don't they realize that McCain will hold her out like a damp rag at arm's length if he should ever get into the White House?

Christians should demonstrate that they have the grace to work with both sides. Abortion, though a defining issue, is only one of many that need to be considered.

You make some good points in the article and I fear that many evangelicals will follow lock step down the McCain-Pallin path, just as the Republicans schemed. But heed where that might lead, sadly not to far from where we are now with Bush. But all is not lost for Obama. I am an evangelical woman and I will be voting for him. I cringe when I think of how evangelicals have so willingly allowed themselves to be used by the Republican party (and their narrow agenda of god, guns and gays) and in so doing, IMO, marring the message of Jesus. I cringe when I remember Pallin's dismissive, smirking attacks on Obama. And, I am beginning to cringe when someone associates me as being an evangelical.

Because "Linda," in her Sept. 7 posting above, accuses me of making "blatantly false" statements, I must respond. I am the legislative director for National Right to Life. In fact, everything I said in my original posting is demonstrably true, and everything is documented, for anybody who cares to look at the documenation.

Linda distorts the findings of Annenberg's FactCheck.org, among her other errors. I would encourage readers to examine both the actual FactCheck report, which she links, and the more exhaustively documented National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) White Paper of August 28, 2008, which is posted here:
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html

You will find that there is no contradiction between the two documents regarding the FACTS regarding the contents of the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protect Act that Obama opposed: The bill simply recognized any infant who was completely expelled from the mother, and alive, as a legal person. Obama explained in 2001, and has never recanted, that he opposed this bill because it declared a "previable fetus" to be a legal person – even though the bill only applied if the baby had achieved "complete expulsion or extraction from its mother." (Obama’s statements are quoted verbatim in the NRLC White Paper.)

The old Illinois law law (720 ILCS 510.6) that "already existed," to which Linda refers, (covered only situations where an abortionist declared before the abortion that there was "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb." But humans are often born alive a month or more before they reach the point where such "sustained survival" – that is, long-term survival – is likely or possible (which is often called the point of "viability"). The old Illinois law has no bearing on many of the induced-labor abortions about which nurses testified before the committees in Congress and the Illinois state legislature, because many of them were performed on unborn humans who were capable of being born alive, and who often were born alive, but who were not old enough to have a "reasonable likelihood of sustained survival . . . outside the womb."

For example, one nurse testified, "It is not uncommon for a live aborted babies to linger for an hour or two or even longer. At Christ Hospital one of these babies once lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift. Last year alone, of the 13 babies that I am aware of who were aborted at Christ Hospital, at least four lived between 1-1/2 to 3 hours, two boys and two girls." The nurse testified that another aborted baby "was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown in the garbage, and when they later were going through the trash to find the baby, the baby fell out of the towel and on to the floor." Another nurse testified that she "happened to walk into a ‘soiled utility room’ and saw, lying on the metal counter, a fetus, naked, exposed and breathing, moving its arms and legs."

The fragment of the FactCheck report that Linda chose to quote makes it clear that the FactCheck analyst personally felt that if someone killed a "pre-viable" live-born infant, it should not be called "infanticide." The FactCheck analyst suggested that "many other people -- perhaps most" would agree with this position. But that is not a fact, it's an opinion, and an opinion for which no support was offered. The dictionary defines infanticide as "the killing of an infant soon after birth." You be the judge. What if midway through that eight-hour shift the nurse referred to above, somebody walked in and hit that "pre-viable" baby on the head with a hammer -- would THAT be "infanticide"? Or, since the baby had a limited lifespan due to extreme prematurity ("previable"), would the hammer blow merely be finishing up an abortion in progress?

Linda quotes the Obama camp as asserting that the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act would have banned abortions. They do say that, and it is very revealing. The ENTIRE TEXT of the bill that Obama killed on March 13, 2003, in the committee he chaired, appears below. Ask yourself, where is that definition that would ban any abortions?

I am a critic of Roe v. Wade -– but even among persons who defend Roe v. Wade, most consider that ruling to confer a right to terminate the lives of unborn humans inside the womb, and do not believe that it diminishes the legal status of a baby who is fully born. However, there really are some people who believe that Roe v. Wade goes further, and requires that a "previable fetus" (Obama’s term) who is the subject of an abortion must remain classified as a non-person no matter where that "previable fetus" is located. In this vision, the so-called "previable fetus" who happens to be outside the mother is still in the process of being aborted, and that entire process (which Obama regards as constitutionally protected) will end only with the death of the newborn. By his actions and his explanations of those actions, Barack Obama showed himself to be among those who hold this expansive vision of the "right to abortion." In Obama’s view, to declare the fully born and living but "previable" human to be a legal person does indeed interfere with "abortion" and does indeed conflict with the full and proper application of "Roe v. Wade."

In short, Obama's commitment to defend the practice of abortion without qualification was so absolute that it led him to reflexively view the issue of babies born alive during abortions through the prism of his concept of Roe v. Wade, and worse, to conclude that a breathing, squirming, fully born pre-viable human baby is still covered by Roe v. Wade. But when he ran for higher office (U.S. Senate) in 2004, he realized how difficult that position would be to defend in the world outside the halls of the Illinois Senate. That is when he began to misrepresent the contents of the bill that he had opposed, which produced the FactCheck judgment: "Obama's claim is wrong . . . The documents from NRLC support the group's claims that Obama is misrepresenting the contents of SB 1082 [the 2003 Illinois BAIPA]."

Here's the full bill text of the bill that Obama voted against in killed in the Illinois Senate committee that he chaired, on March 13, 2003:

Section 5. The Statute on Statutes is amended by adding Section 1.36 as follows: (5 ILCS 70/1.36 new)

Sec. 1.36. Born-alive infant.

(a) In determining the meaning of any statute or of any rule, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative agencies of this State, the words "person", "human being", "child", and "individual" include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

(b) As used in this Section, the term "born alive", with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after that expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

(c) Nothing in this Section [the bill] 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.

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon becoming law. >

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
Washington, D.C. 20004
www.nrlc.org
Legfederal // at // aol-dot-com