Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is harshly accusing a pro-life group of "lying" about his record on abortion as a Illinois state senator, despite compelling evidence on the pro-lifers' side.
Obama made the aggressive attack when Christian Broadcasting Network Senior National Correspondent David Brody asked Obama about documentation the National Right to Life Committee recently obtained of a 2003 committee vote on “born alive” legislation that would have required medical officials to give life-saving care to babies who survived abortion.
Obama has said again and again he voted against versions of that bill as an Illinois state senator because it did not include language to protect Roe v. Wade, as the federal version did which sailed through the U.S. Senate 98-0. The committee report, however, shows a 10-0 vote in favor of an amendment to add the same language to protect abortion rights that was added to the federal bill. That same committee report subsequently shows Obama voting the kill the bill in a "final action" vote.
The committee report is also verified by an Associated Press story.
“There was some literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee,” Brody told Obama in an interview that took place Saturday night. “And they’re basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill.”
Obama said the NRLC “have not been telling the truth” and launched into some of the most vicious language he’s ever used against his opponents. “And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying,” he lectured.
“It defies common sense and it defies imagination and for people to keep on pushing this is offensive and it's an example of the kind of politics that we have to get beyond,” Obama said. “It's one thing for people to disagree with me about the issue of choice; it's another thing for people to out and out misrepresent my positions repeatedly, even after they know that they're wrong. And that's what's been happening.”
Brody published a video of the interview on CBN.
Douglas Johnson, NRLC’s legislative director wants Obama to apologize to his group or prove the documents they obtained are erroneous. Obama must “either declare the newly discovered documents to be forgeries and call for an investigation of the forgery, or admit that he had misrepresented his record on the live-born infants legislation (not just once, but for four years), and apologize to those he's called liars," Johnson told Townhall in an email.
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