A Sept. 16 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas incompletely details Barack Obama’s position against an Illinois law “protecting babies who survived abortions.”
After noting that Obama had said he opposed the Illinois law because it did not match a federal law on the subject, Lucas noted that “The 2003 version of the state proposal mirrored the federal law in that it had specific language stating that nothing in that law should be construed to undermine the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.”
But as Media Matters noted, a state law containing the same language as the federal law would not have offered the same protection because, as Planned Parenthood has pointed out, there are no federal laws regarding abortion but there are state laws, and a state law that declared it was not “undermining” Roe v. Wade would also need to state it was also not undermining state abortion regulations as well.
Lucas also failed to note Obama’s other defense for not supporting a “born alive” law — that it was unnecessary because the behavior it banned was already illegal.