I concede your correction about the prosecutors’ agreement. You also effectively raise a question about George’s reference to an alleged statement about the attorney general. However, regarding this and the point about the Christ’s Hospital investigation, it seems irrelevant where one stands on that particular investigation in judging Senator Obama’s opposition to BAIPA since in Obama’s oral argument he concedes it as a fact that born alive, non viable infants were not being given proper care and he does not argue against the bill on the grounds of redundancy.

Obama’s opposition to Senate bill 1093
-It is misleading to suggest this does not provide specific procedural controls.
- The Christ Hospital case was not being debated. Obama says about the prior debate in the Judiciary Committee that the fact came out that  born alive children resulting from an induced abortion (which he begrudged to call children) were not being properly cared for ‘during the brief period of time that they were still living.’ Senator Obama asks if this is a key concern of the bill and Senator O’Malley confirms it is.  Senator Obama does not argue that the children were not being taken care of properly but assumes it as a fact. 
-Senator Obama expressly opposes the bill, not because of an understanding that it is redundant, nor that there are no abuses occurring, but because, he asserts, defining a ‘previable fetus’ (the term he uses to refer to a born alive child as previable child) as a human being would  ’essentially bar abortions.’ Senator Obama specifically objects to placing a burden on a doctor to keep alive a previable child and give them as much medical attention as is needed to keep them alive. Senator O’Malley said the bill was to “clarify, resecure, and reaffirm the rights of a child born in America” which obviously was needed given the begrudgement of people like Obama to call a previable infant a human being. 

I wish every American voter would read and reflect on Senator Obama’s words in his opposition to Senate bill 1093, found at this link on pages 84-90: 
http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf

Your defense of Obama is partially that the case at Christ Hospital was  not substantiated but that is not the expressed premise Obama goes on in his argument. However, questions were effectively raised by commentators on this thread about the investigation. Why were the two whistle blowers not approached by those investigating the allegations? I wonder too what one would expect to find in logs: “Left baby in soiled linen closet at 2:00 A.M.”? 

You are an intelligent man. There’s no need to sully your arguments with an ad hominem insinuation at the end.

David Alexander,

You don’t seem to be taking into account further comments about the consent decree on the same web page:

[T]he consent decree also preserves the requirement in Section 6(2)(b) that “Subsequent to the abortion, if a child is born alive, the physician required by Section 6(2)(a) to be in attendance shall exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion.” Section 6(2)(b) further provides that “[a]ny such physician who intentionally, knowingly, … violates Section 6(2)(b) commits a Class 3 felony.”

Therefore, notwithstanding the consent decree and the arguments of people criticizing Obama for opposing various incarnations of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, when those bills were considered, if a child was born alive, Illinois law required the doctor in attendance “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion.” Failure to adhere to this requirement constituted a felony – the consent decree did not preclude the enforcement of that requirement.

The allegations against Christ Hospital were investigated and could not be substantiated. Consequently, the government had no evidence of wrongdoing and could not have prosecuted. Under the circumstances, it would have been extremely unlikely that the Attorney General would have said the law didn’t allow him to prosecute. What would he have prosecuted? Would a state attorney general say, “There have been some allegations against Christ Hospital. We have investigated them and couldn’t verify that they were true. But, you know, even if we could prove they were true, there is nothing I could do about them. I, your pro-life attorney general, am powerless to act when hospitals mistreat born-alive infants.” The fact of the matter is that Ryan did not make any statement at all about the allegations against Christ Hospital. The Ryan statement is an anti-Obama urban legend. And furthermore, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Public Health did say the alleged (but unsubstantiated) mistreatment of born-alive infants at Christ Hospital would indeed have been illegal had it occurred.

However much you want it to be the case that born-alive infants were being mistreated in Chicago, and Obama blocked the government from being able to do anything about it, it is simply not true.

Politically irrelevant people have a wide latitude of options, including teeth gnashing. If, however, you want to have any influence in politics, you may want really examine the opinion polls and figure out what is possible and what is not possible.

The nearly uniform negative reaction to Akin’s comments is worth a serious thought or two.

Why should the authors care about the polls? Should a person take his moral compass from opinion polls and flagellate himself if he falls into an extreme? Shouldn’t one rather weep and gnash his teeth for finding himself fallen into company with those indifferent to infanticide?

In Eric Zorn’s summary about BAIPA, he mentions the following about the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975:
“Prosecutors in Illinois entered into a consent decree in 1993 agreeing not to prosecute doctors for apparent or alleged violations of this law based on “born alive” definitions and other definitions (see the links below).” That seems to me to be evidence supporting the contention that the reality was you could not prosecute the cases raised by Stanek under that law, especially because of questions about definitions, regardless of what the attorney general did or did not say.

David Nichols: “As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician . . . ” That is not from a discussion of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, but rather a bill considered in the same session titled the Induced Birth Infants Liability Act. It is extremely misleading to quote Obama’s statement on that bill without making it clear that it refers to a different bill with a completely different set of issues.”

Induced Birth Infants Liability Act was the companion bill to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act and depended on definitions in this later act for its solvency so it is misleading of you, rather, to say that this is extremely misleading and to imply that this second bill  was completely unrelated. Eric Zorn does not scruple to make a distinction between these two as being of import but simply writes in preface to the quote: “Here’s some of what Obama said on April 4, 2002 during floor debate in the Illinois Senate.” Is Zorn also ‘extremely misleading’ and an unreliable source on this? 

Link to Eric Zorn’s article: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/08/bornalive.html

The biggest problem with the article is that nobody cares, except the authors and few others.

The two parties are involved in a political election that will turn on three things only:

(1) The ecomony; (2) the ecomony; and (3) the economy.

Abortion is not a significant issue in presidential elections for 80% of the American voters.

The other 20% are split about evenly between extreme factions.

My purpose in writing in this thread has been to show there are serious problems in Robert George and Yuval Levin’s piece “Obama and Infanticide.” It would be a huge undertaking to cover everything that has been done and said in the Illinois Legislature and the various political campaigns that followed. That is not what I am trying to do. I am pointing out that it was not “clear” that born-alive infants were mistreated in Christ Hospital. I am also pointing out that an alleged statement by Attorney General Ryan which figures very prominently in George and Levin’s piece seems never to have been made. I am pointing out that a statement like the following has no place in civil, rational discourse: “That is why the Born Alive Act was necessary—and everybody knew it.” It is very difficult to google “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” and get anything other than denunciations (with an occasional defense) of Obama, so I can’t be sure of this. But I believe Illinois did eventually pass a version of the bill, and of course, a federal version was passed in 2002. But I believe the only other state to pass a version was South Carolina earlier this year. If BAIPA was necessary, and everybody knew it, where are the other state versions?

It is extremely time consuming to critique an article like this, so I am going to mention one more significant problem and let it go at that. George and Levin give a quote from Obama that begins, “As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician . . . ” That is not from a discussion of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, but rather a bill considered in the same session titled the Induced Birth Infants Liability Act. It is extremely misleading to quote Obama’s statement on that bill without making it clear that it refers to a different bill with a completely different set of issues.