College Republican Federation of Virginia

Barack Obama’s infamous habit of merely voting ‘present’ while an Illinois State Senator is well known, yet what may be more infamous are the issues Obama deemed worthy of actually voting on.  One such issue, the Induced Birth Infant Liability Act, a bill that gave full legal protection to children who survive partial-birth abortions, received the thumbs down from His Highness.

In fact, Obama voted against the bill twice and then killed it a third time when it was sent to a committee he chaired.  A record of his final ‘no’ vote on the Senate Floor can be found here.  The extremity of this vote, on a bill not even opposed by NARAL, is unprecedented even for Obama.  This same issue came before Congress as the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, where it passed unanimously in the Senate and with only 15 ‘nays’ in the House before being signed by President Bush in 2002.

With that kind of bipartisan support, how does Obama explain his vote?  He doesn’t.  In fact, a year later at the Democratic National Convention, Obama had the temerity to outline his vision of a post-partisan (and decidedly liberal) future.  Post-partisan?  How can someone who votes against giving infant survivors of abortion legal protection from the people who tried to kill them be post-partisan?

Even some of Congress’ most ardent defenders of abortion, including Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Chuck Schumer voted to protect these children.  Yet Obama wouldn’t even allow the bill to come to a vote, after twice voting against it in previous years.  Apparently, these most vulnerable of children, whose own mothers don’t want them and whose doctors are trying to kill them, were deemed unworthy of Obama’s consideration, and the law’s protection.  That’s change I don’t even want to think about, much less believe in.