E!! The True Conservative Story™

This morning, Culture11’s James Poulous called Yuval Levin “one of the sharpest tools in the conservative shed” and provided a link to this piece on why John McCain is a better choice than Obama.

I cheerfully admit to being biased toward all things Levin - you can see what I mean over at The New Atlantis - but the piece is well worth reading even for non-admirers.

Hospital nurse Jill Stanek – the woman who held that late-term Downs Syndrome baby in her arms for 45 minutes as it suffered and took its last breath and then later testified before the Illinois state Senate and Congress – was on Hannity & Colmes last night. 

She said that in her experience, babies survive 10 to 20% of all late term abortions and could survive if given the proper medical care.

And she said that even after hearing her detailed testimony about what had gone on in this hospital, Obama still spoke out against the Born-Alive law in no uncertain terms.

Obama stated (and I heard the sound byte played this morning, exactly as she represented it) that having another doctor come in to evalute and save a born-alive baby after a botched abortion is “too cumbersome because…it burdens the original decision” i.e. it overrides the mother’s decision to abort.

In other words, Obama knew exactly what had happened – and would happen again – without the passage of the Born-Alive Act and he still voted against it when not one other member of the Senate did.

Obama has given us (at least) four explanations for his vote and still has not admitted the truth.  Clearly, he realizes that what he knew, when he knew it, and why he did what he did is so unthinkable to the average person that it is basically political suicide to admit it. 

Focus group studies on this issue have shown that even people who are “pro-choice” are repulsed and sickened by the thought of someone standing by and doing nothing while a living, breathing baby dies.  The average person possesses a primary, deep-seated instinct to help a suffering, dying creature and cannot understand or relate to someone who would not do so if given the chance.

Obama once said his definition of “sin” was to be “out of alignment with my own values.”  This past Sunday at Saddelback, he lamented that we do not do enough to live out the value of doing well unto “the least of these.”  (As you have done unto the least of these, so you have done unto Me.”  Matthew 25:40)

When all this has passed, I hope Obama contemplates his present failures and the grave errors which preceded them, that he feels the sting of shame and remorse, and that he begs mercy from the Maker he says he believes in…for doing nothing to stop the suffering and dying of “the least of these.”  For who is more powerless and helpless than a tiny baby unwanted and abandoned by its own mother?