McCain is a clear pro-life candidate

To the Editor:

The election choice this year is between John McCain, a candidate with a 25-year history of voting pro-life, and Barack Obama, a candidate whose documented votes on abortion are more radical than anyone who has ever run for the presidency.

In a speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007, Obama said, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.”

The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), S. 1173, is a bill that would establish a federal right to abortion.

In the words of the National Organization for Women (NOW), FOCA would “sweep away hundred of anti-abortion laws [and] policies,” including parental notification, parental consent, a ban on partial birth abortion and the Hyde Amendment, which has blocked almost all federal funding of abortion since 1976.

Obama led the opposition to the Illinois “Born Alive Infant Protection Act,” which ensured medical care and protection for babies born alive after abortions, and he voted four times against it. Even Hillary Clinton voted for the virtually identical federal version of the bill, which Congress enacted without a single dissenting vote in 2003. Obama claims his intention was to protect abortion; in fact, his vote allowed babies who were born alive after abortions to die without care.

Obama does not support funding for pregnancy crisis centers.

Obama has pledged to make “reproductive health care,” which includes abortion services, part of his national health insurance plan.

Aggie Dowd

Franklin