by Ken Roebuck

Created on: January 18, 2009

It has been over 35 years since the controversial Roe v Wade Supreme Court (7-2) decision to make early term abortions legal in the US. Despite the landmark decision in 1973 abortion rights are still being vigorously contested in many quarters of the country. So where does our newly elected "post partisan" President stand on this inflammatory issue of abortion? As the most liberal democrat while in the US Senate, Obama strongly supports a women's right to terminate her pregnancy for any reason through legal and safe abortion procedures as defined by Roe. If you go by his voting record as well as his public speeches and policy statements, Obama will apparently do just about anything and everything he can to preserve a women's right to affordable and unfettered abortion on demand as promoted by tax subsidized abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Indeed, Obama's explicit even enthusiastic support for abortion on demand has rightly earned him a 100% rating from NARAL (National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America as well as an enthusiastic endorsement from Planned Parenthood the largest abortion provider in the US. In contrast, Obama not surprisingly has received a rating of 0% by the National Right to Life Committee the largest and most influential nonprofit prolife advocacy organization.

Obama's wife Michelle who is his closest political advisor is also pro choice and strongly supports a women's right to choose. Like her husband Mrs. Obama who also graduated from Harvard law school holds extreme views on abortion and wrote a controversial fund raising letter defending a partial birth abortion procedure known as "intact dilation and evacuation", a contentious late-term abortion technique. In her letter she called partial birth abortion a "legitimate medical procedure" and declared the federal ban "a flawed law" that "is clearly unconstitutional". However, the Supreme Court in 2007 disagreed with her albeit narrowly upholding the ban with a vote of 5-4.

As for Obama's voting record as an Illinois legislator he opposed the bill to ban partial birth abortion and the state's "Born Alive Infants Protection Act" that ensures the rights of children who survive failed abortion attempts. He also voted against legislation banning state funding for abortions. In fact Obama has never supported any limitation of abortion to either lessen the availability of the procedure or to reduce government funding for abortions. He has made it unambiguously

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