For all the things that Barack Obama is (i.e., arrogant lying proto-Marxist liberal snob), he’s not a baby-killer. Remember the SCHIP debate of a few months back? Nancy Pelosi proposed this dramatic expansion of SCHIP, ostensibly to “help the children”, but what we conservatives really understood was that it represented the camel’s nose under the tent towards socialized medicine. They even admitted as such in moments of candor. We were right to oppose it on these grounds and of course we were falsely accused of hating children by “our friends” on the left. I view BAIPA as no different from Obama’s point of view. That is essentially why groups like NARAL oppose partial-birth abortion bans – they view them as the slippery slope to overturning Roe v. Wade, and I think that is a far more likely reason why Obama would oppose BAIPA. That is bad enough – he opposed a bill that was unanimously favored in the US Senate and has broad bipartisan support all over the country. That definitely puts him on the extreme liberal edge of abortion politics in this country. But it’s not because he has some bloodlust for infant flesh. We risk ruining our own credibility when we make claims like this. After all our side will have a great deal more to say about Obama in the future, and we don’t want our future statements which are also going to be quite important in speaking to Obama’s judgment (Rezko anyone?) in addition to this issue, and we don’t want our other legitimate claims to be dismissed casually as “oh that’s coming from the same folks who think Obama’s a baby-killer, they will say anything to trash him”. Look, it’s very very VERY important that Obama loses. If he wins, it is a certainty that we will get socialized medicine and that change will be irreversible – not even Gingrich’s Class of 1994 was able to eliminate even a single government agency, let alone something big like socialized medicine. We will advance rapidly down the slippery slope of Europeanization where we have sluggish economic growth, huge tax burdens, and an ever-more intrusive nanny state, not to mention significantly reducing our chances of victory in the GWOT. The stakes are just way too high to risk so much of our credibility on a claim of infanticide that is IMO dubious. Obama’s votes can be explained in a manner that is far more consistent with extreme liberal politics and does not cast him in the role of moral monster, which nobody will believe anyway. That is my sermon for today.

There is a Bright Line and Obama stands firmly on the other side of that line as compared to the rest of the country. His votes on BAIPA demonstrate that. But we risk the ability to make that point forcefully when we degenerate into claims of infanticide. That is my point.

Oh and don’t be fooled that pro-choicers are libertarians when it comes to a woman’s body. They won’t support a woman’s “right” to smoke or drink or do drugs while pregnant, for instance, even though it’s the identical libertarian argument. They aren’t libertarians, they are feminists, which is a far more inchoate philosophy.