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.
Reasons to disagree:
- 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
Score: +2 (Reasons to agree), -1 (reasons to disagree) = +1
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.
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