Pintek's Smears Continue

Local embarrassement Mike Pintek has hit the big time, again. He's been written up on MediaMatters.org, again. For an Obama smear he's made as a guest host on Quinn and Rose, again.

This time he's spreading the "infanticide" smear. Here's what he said (according to MediaMatters):

Back in the 2001, 2003 session of the Illinois state legislature, when he was a state senator, Obama opposed bills that would have required medical attention be given to babies who somehow survived the killing fields of the abortion table and would have given the aborted baby legal rights.

We'll be hearing a lot of this smear in the coming weeks, to be sure. MediaMatters is on it:

As Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, Obama opposed certain bills amending the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975 while he was in the Illinois state Senate because he and other opponents of the bills said they would pose a threat to abortion rights and said they were unnecessary because Illinois law already prohibited the conduct supposedly addressed by the bills. [links in original]

The campaign has issued a rather extensive rebuttal to this smear (I somehow doubt Mike Pintek will be reading it anytime soon - if ever).

So let's see. The law in Illinois already prohibited the conduct addressed in the bills AND the bills threatened Roe v Wade. As Obama said on the Illinois Senate floor in 2001 (from Factcheck.org):

Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old – child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. [emphasis in original]

And a year later:

I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births.

And anyway, does Mike Pintek really think that Barack Obama wants to kill children? If so he should just say it up front without the protective veil of this "he opposed bills requiring medical attention to aborted fetuses so therefore he supports infanticide" line.