Barack: Candidate of Change

I have heard the mantra of “change” for many months. Senator Barack Obama constantly invokes change as his qualification for the presidency. His supporters clamor for Barack because of change. But can Barack’s supporters define change? The supporters I talk with are caught up in the wave of emotion, and do not know what “change” actually means. I discovered why Mr. Obama is the candidate of change, and what it means to our future.

Mr. Obama seeks to change the meaning of “person” under the Constitution. Most regrettably, he seeks to narrow and limit the meaning of “person.” What do I mean by this? It is simple. Once a fetus is born, when it leaves the birth canal, when its lungs fill with air during its first breath, Barack does not support measures to keep that baby alive. He voted against a bill to classify the born human being as a “person,” which gives it the full rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The Born Alive Infants bill came up in the Illinois Senate when Mr. Obama was a state senator. The bill would have defined “person” as a baby that was fully born, even after a failed abortion attempt. Instead of leaving the baby to die in a trash heap after a failed abortion, the bill would have required medical care to keep the baby alive. What is unreasonable about that? Nothing. When the Illinois bill came to a vote, Mr. Obama voted “no”.

But didn’t that bill infringe on the so-called “choice” of a woman? A bill with identical language came up at the federal level. According to California Senator Barbara Boxer (D), a staunch supporter of abortion, the federal bill “certainly DOES NOT attack Roe in any way.” In a Congressional hearing, a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. testified about induced labor abortions and one specific instance where a child was not provided medical support. “One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have the time to hold him. I couldn't bear the thought of this suffering child lying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived.” Barack voted against keeping that most-vulnerable child alive. That is shameful.

One thinks Mr. Obama would support such a bill, especially in light of America’s history. Mr. Obama should know the Three-Fifths Compromise only counted African-Americans as a part of a person for purposes of voting representation. Mr. Obama should know that the U.S. Supreme Court said African Americans were not persons worthy of the rights of other Caucasian citizens. Mr. Obama should know the danger of seeking to restrict who a “person” is under the Constitution. Yet, he votes to change and restrict the definition and rights of a person, the most vulnerable human beings in our society, babies.

Mr. Obama is the candidate of change. Restricting the definition and rights of humans already born is not the “change” that I want.