Reasons to agree:
- Obama had a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives.
- Obama voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive.
- Obama was wrong to have voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
- Obama is wrong on embryonic stem cell research
- Obama voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. That was bad.
- It is pretty messed up for Obama to have voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions.
- Abortion is wrong.
Reasons to disagree:
- OBAMA: If it sounds incredible that I would vote to withhold lifesaving treatment from an infant, that’s because it’s not true. There was a bill that said you have to provide lifesaving treatment. The fact is that there was already a law on the books in Illinois that required providing lifesaving treatment, which is why not only myself but pro-choice Republicans and Democrats voted against it. With respect to partial-birth abortion, I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health and life, and this bill did not contain that exception
- Obama is right to reach across the isle for common ground on abortion.
- People don't care what Obama believes. Issues don't matter with Obama. People like Obama because he is different. but Change for change sake does not solve problems.
One vote that especially riled abortion opponents involved restrictions on a type of abortion where the fetus sometimes survives, occasionally for hours. The restrictions, which never became law, included requiring the presence of a second doctor to care for the fetus.
Abortion opponents see Obama's vote on medical care for aborted fetuses as a refusal to protect the helpless. Some have even accused him of supporting infanticide.
Obama — who joined several other Democrats in voting "present" in 2001 and "no" the next year — argued the legislation was worded in a way that unconstitutionally threatened a woman's right to abortion by defining the fetus as a child.
"It would essentially bar abortions because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this was a child then this would be an anti-abortion statute,"Obama said in the Senate's debate in March 2001.
