The Declaration Mural by Barry Faulkner, at the National Archives rotunda
FLASHBACK: Alan Keyes condemns Obama's support for infanticide
August 30, 2004, Alan Keyes on CBS 2 Chicago This Morning
"Barack Obama is somebody who has voted for infanticide a few years ago, in which he actually cast a vote to allow completely born, living babies to be set aside like garbage. He voted that they should be set aside like garbage to die. And that's as extremist as it gets."
September 7, 2004, Alan Keyes on the Scott Thomas show
"One fellow asked me, by the way, a question about whether or not I had actually said that Jesus Christ would not vote for Obama. OK? And I explained to him that I was reasoning about this problem of infanticide, where we actually have a situation in Illinois where, in the hospitals, a baby born alive after a botched abortion, where the nurse is standing there holding this living baby, separate from the mother, in her arms, and there is a practice of putting the baby aside in the soiled linen bin, or wherever, to just let that child die. And there's been an effort in the state legislature to stop this practice, and three times Barack Obama has voted against the bill that would stop the practice of letting these babies die."
September 9, 2004, Alan Keyes on Kresta in the Afternoon
"[Obama] had voted in the Illinois state legislature on a bill called the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and this is to address a situation that occurs here in the hospitals of Illinois where a child is born alive in the course of a botched abortion, where they've tried to kill the child and it hasn't succeeded, and the baby comes out of the womb alive. And Jill Stanek, a nurse who had been in this situation, reported it to the state legislature. They were just taking the babies and putting them in the soiled linen closet or laying them aside to die. And this is not a case of abortion even. What you're really dealing with here is infanticide, where you have a child living and separate from the mother, able to live and breathe and survive on its own, where the question is, what are you going to do for this child? Are you going to do what you would do for any other baby or not? And what they decide is, not. The rationale seems to be, well, since the mother wanted it dead, she'll have it dead. And that, in and of itself, is a gross violation of the most fundamental principle, in an area where, unlike the child in the womb, I don't think anybody can even pretend that there's a dispute of any kind about the fact that this is a life as much entitled to respect as yours or mine, and yet they are casually tossing it away like garbage."
Timeless truths
May 1, 1995, Alan Keyes' Address to Newt Gingrich's GOPAC, Washington, D.C.
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"In American history, you never get away from the Declaration issues. They haunt you until you resolve them, or until they resolve you. . . . The abortion issue is a Declaration issue. It's an issue that goes to the very heart of our principles and how we apply them."
September 10, 1995, Alan Keyes' Address to the Christian Coalition, Washington, D.C.
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"I'll tell you. I'll be honest. I think that we have got to make the restoration of the moral and material foundations of the marriage-based family the number one priority of this nation's life. Nothing is more important. Not the budget, not the deficit, not the taxes, not the power of the federal government or the state government. We will rebuild our families, or we will perish--and you know it!"
The moral evil of abortion
May 16, 2010, "The GOP's uncivil union — pro-life voters, pro-abortion money"
(Loyal to Liberty essay)
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Excerpt:
"It has become painfully clear over the years that there are undeniable 'internal conflicts' over abortion and other moral issues in the heart of the GOP. Whether it's Republican First Ladies or influential pro-'abortion rights' donors and fundraisers, the Party has plowed the furrow of its electoral ambitions with a team that unequally yokes so-called 'pro-choice' donors with a conservative base that is emphatically pro-life."
July 30, 2007, Crisis of the Republic #9, "'Abortion Rights' and the moral threat to freedom"
(RenewAmerica essay)
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Excerpt:
"The moral principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the moral character required to sustain them, are the bedrock foundations of American liberty. Politicians who disregard these essentials in order to win votes may pose as the champion of this or that individual right, but as Hamilton observes in the Federalist #1, they are likely to be among 'those ... who have overturned the liberties of republics ... commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.'"
April 27, 2007, "Gardeners of Evil"
(RenewAmerica essay)
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Excerpt:
"We will finally get the leaders America needs only when we resolve to become the citizens of conscience and principle that we ought to be. For God and our posterity, now is the time."
October 8, 2006, "Worldwide Sanctity of Life" Blue Army of our Lady of Faith, EWTN
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"I think God wants us to remember, also, all of those innocent lives that are claimed when we don't see it — sometimes in places far away that don't touch us, in wars, in famines, and other things sometimes induced by human greed and lust and wickedness, but also the death of those innocents that disappear without our ken because we do not wish to acknowledge their lives, even as here, in the United States, we now proclaim the right to do to death the infant sleeping in the womb."
August 18, 2004, City Club of Chicago, "Morality and economics"
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"Now, some folks I know have been a little critical of me, because since I stepped into the state, I have had near my heart and on my lips the great moral principles that are at the basis of this nation's founding, and I have talked about the great moral crisis that we are in, and the issue of moral principle, abortion, that is at the heart of that crisis. And I have done so quite clearly and quite consciously. I want to let everybody know, because people are raising questions about this, and some people are saying, 'He's just a one-issue candidate,' and so forth and so on. I want to make perfectly clear that the Alan Keyes that is here today is the Alan Keyes who has been speaking out and working, year after year, and over the decades, with people of good heart, and I will continue to do so."
August 24, 2001, Renewing American Principle Tour kick-off
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"We are in the midst of the crisis that results from so many years when we've been turning our back on this truth. And we've been listening to those who offer the siren's song of self-worship to our people, convincing us that because we've made these and those great truths and we have all this wonderful wealth and we have triumphed so often against our enemies, that that's all we need now, we just need that power. And if we can open up new avenues and vistas of success, then through that science we shall be, as the serpent promised in the Garden of Eden, as gods. You want to know the interesting thing, though? That's no longer a kind of abstract speculation, is it? No. We have folks who are standing right now in the precincts of our science and they're offering to us this very prize: 'And ye shall be as gods.' And one of the first things they're trying to tell us is that we shall now be the creators of life."
June 23, 2001, "Declaring the right to live"
(WorldNetDaily essay)
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Excerpt:
"The movement against partial-birth abortion had, from the beginning, two kinds of pro-life supporters. Both sides agreed that an advantage of choosing this aspect of the abortion issue was that here, at least, there was some reasonable possibility of success. But one group was drawn to the issue because of its powerful presentation — magnification, if you will — of the universal principles that are necessarily involved in any abortion. The other group was drawn to it for the largely opposite reason that it offered an opportunity to be successfully "pro-life" while remaining a comfortable distance from those pesky moral principles."
October 28, 2000, speech at the Calvary Church in Southern California
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"We do not have a crisis because we are losing our families; we are losing our families because we have turned this nation's heart from its allegiance to God Almighty. That is the source of all our ills."
September 22, 2000, "America's Unity Call
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"Why shouldn't someone believe that we will ignore the cries of the poor, that we will harden our hearts against the needs of our neighbors, that we will not care for the requirements of our aging parents and friends, since we are so willing callously to disregard the voiceless cries of our helpless future in the womb? It boils down to that in the end. Some people always say, 'Why does he always get back to that?' I'll tell you why I always get back to abortion: because we can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, or they come from a human choice. Either our rights are here by the will of God, or they're here by our mother's choice. Either we must respect the integrity of God's choice in every human being, in every human life, because it is God's word and God's will before we have anything to do with it, or not a single one of us are safe in our claim to rights and freedoms."
July 01, 2000, "Standing in the path of evil
(WorldNetDaily essay)
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Excerpt:
"It is still a great privilege to be an American citizen and to be able to fight abortion in the political arena, rather than in the streets and barricades. I count as a great privilege every day that I am able to spend as a free American, fully participating in our political life. In our frustration and anger at the corruption of American political culture, it is easy to dismiss the unique opportunity this privilege still presents us. But those of us who come somewhat recently from a heritage without this privilege understand how precious and important it is to be able to stand up, to speak out, to vote and to run for office. My resolve to fight the political battle against abortion to the end is inspired partly by the fact that my ancestors were denied the privileges of citizenship and enslaved for such a long period in our nation's history by the very principle that abortion represents: that it is possible for some human beings to have a property right in the life of others and to act in such a way that their power gives them the "right" to disregard the basic dignity of innocent human life."
May 12, 2000, Rally in Idaho Falls, Idaho
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"And, of course, the beauty of it is that that also represents, doesn't it, the key to understanding the basis for our moral character. If we acknowledge that our rights come from God, then it follows that the same rights that we get from His authority must be used in ways that respect His authority. And when folks come to us and want to substitute human choice, and human will, and human convenience for our respect for that choice which God has made to implant in each and every human being a kernel of His divine will, which we must respect, whoever we may be — when we show a proper understanding of that, then we are walking the road of American character and American discipline that provides the basis for a system of self-government that does not turn to licentious freedom and, therefore, destroys itself. And that, I think, is the key to this election. It's why I've always thought issues like abortion are so important. It's not just because we need to have respect for those innocent lives in the womb, but it's also because we need to have respect for the moral life of our country. And, if we embrace the abortion doctrine, we are abandoning the moral principles that are the basis for our claim to liberty, and for that understanding of freedom which is self-restrained, self-disciplined, self-governing, because it acknowledges the transcendent authority of Almighty God."
April 29, 2000, Renew America rally in Alabama
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"Our rights don't come from God if they are based upon our mother's choice. And once we have banished God from the throne of that authority, then we have no claim to liberty or dignity that cannot, in the end, be trampled down and destroyed by the superior power of force, or wealth, or ability. And one of the things this nation is suppose to stand for is the equal dignity of all, regardless of station, standing, intelligence, ability, whatever it might be. That acknowledgment that in every human being, in every human life, there is present a kernel of God's word and divinity that must be respected by every human will and power whatsoever. But once we embrace the abortion lie, we throw away that truth that is the foundation of our justice."
March 8, 2000, Renew America rally at the McKay Events Center, Orem, Utah
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"No matter how you cut it, the betrayal of our moral principles undermines our sense of moral self-respect. It undercuts our moral confidence. It makes us susceptible to the arguments to which we are talked out of liberty and into an ever-expanding government power.
"And I believe that there is only one right answer to this crisis. It is a simple and clear one, but it will be difficult, I think. For, we must return our allegiance to the fundamental principle that makes us free. We must apply that principle consistently to the great issues of our times — starting with abortion. We must go forward without shame and with courage and boldness to represent to the American people, as we are suppose to represent to the world, the great truth that our rights come from God, and must be exercised with respect for the authority of God.
"If we are willing to restore that moral foundation for our liberty, then we will come again into our own in the way of moral self-respect and self-confidence. We will stand against those arguments which suggest that, if we control the decisions in the community, in the schools, in the money, the world will deteriorate, because we know that there is no need to fear the sovereignty of a people who acknowledge the sovereignty of God."
March 2, 2000, Republican Presidential Debate, Los Angeles
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"I think the most important way to stop the coarsening of our culture is to return that culture to its basic moral principle. I think the most incredible coarsening of American life occurs when we sanction things like abortion, which are basically on the argument that might makes right, because the mother has absolute power over the child, she can dispose of the child's life according to her will. That notion that you do what you can get away with, that you go after anything that's successful, that you make your profits exploiting human lust, greed and whatever effects it might have on the decency of a society you go forward, that is what is destroying us."
February 7, 2000, National Press Club speech and Q&A
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"The pro-life principle is clear: that child's life in the womb is not a matter for human choice, because as a matter of American principle it is understood that the right to life, along with our other unalienable rights, is based not on human choice, but on the choice of our Creator, God. A power beyond our power, a will beyond our will."
January 26, 2000, New Hampshire Republican Presidential Debate
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"It is God's choice that that child is in the womb. And for us to usurp that choice in contradiction of our Declaration principles is just as wrong. Therefore, how can you take the position that would subject such a choice to a family conference or any other human choice? Isn't it God's choice that protects the life of that child in the womb?"
January 13, 2000, Proudly Pro-life Dinner
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"To secure the blessings of liberty by killing the posterity? It's a very interesting thought. I guess you're liberating them from life. It doesn't work. And the cause in which we gather here today, the cause that reaches the lives of those individual children, is a cause that therefore touches upon the future in a direct way: in the voices that will not be heard, the work that will not be done, the strong hearts that will not stand up to be counted for justice in any way, the songs unsung, the poems unwritten, the beauty of God's mind that shall ever be locked away in secret from us because we killed those who would have been the messengers.
"In that way we kill our future. But more directly, we kill the future of our country and our liberty by destroying that moral foundation without which it cannot survive. What is at stake, therefore, in our pro-life cause is the future of our nation, but also the future of everything good that our nation has brought and will bring to this world."
December 10, 1999, National Guard Armory Pro-life Rally
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"Now, I've gone through this kind of long preface because I don't think you can understand the significance of the issues that we confront today, deriving from all of these various ways in which the regime of abortion and the culture of death are working themselves out in our lives, we can't understand any of these things, in their true implications, if we don't continually remind ourselves of what I've just said — and therefore of the relationship between our moral principles and our national identity, between what we believe to be just and who we are as a people. Once we understand that connection, we realize that whatever their specious arguments that are used to justify the abandonment of those moral principles, whatever it is they're 'offering' us in exchange, what we're giving up is far more precious and important than anything they can offer us."
October 22, 1999, "Arguing abortion"
(WorldNetDaily essay)
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Excerpt:
"I understand that many people assume that my own absolute rejection of the abortion doctrine implies an absolute condemnation of those who defend it, or even those who cannot find the will or understanding to stand with me to oppose it. And I agree that it would be a mistake to conclude that all those who accept abortion take equally immoral stances on every issue. But I emphatically disagree that the solution is to cooperate in the effort to put abortion on the back burner. Continuing to raise the issue is actually a sign of our deep respect and concern not only for the unborn, but for those who right now reject the pro-life position."
June 18, 1999, "Renewing America's Moral Self-Confidence"
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"I believe that this whole business of abortion has poisoned the wellspring of America's conscience and moral self-confidence, and led us to believe that, yes, we are a depraved people incapable any longer of turning liberty into a just and decent society."
January 23, 1999, Conservative Political Action Conference
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"I have, as you know, a fairly broad background. I have been involved in foreign policy. I have been involved in budget issues. I could stand up here and tell you what you want to hear, probably a little bit better than most other people, on any issue you want. Why is it that instead I have spent and will spend every chance I get, before you and every other audience in this country, emphasizing one fact? We are in the midst of a moral crisis; we must return to the fundamental moral principles that this country was based on. We must address the issues that involve our rejection and destruction of those principles, starting with the issue of abortion and the need to reverse Roe vs. Wade, and get ourselves back on track in terms of our Declaration principles."
November 20, 1998, "Our Conservative Principles: The Path to Victory"
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"And that means that at the top of our agenda we have to deal with those issues that corrupt our moral heart, starting . . . not ending . . . starting, and without embarrassment, addressing the issue of abortion first and foremost. That issue represents the corrupt principle that we can substitute human choice for God's choice in the determination of human rights and human worth. That is a vicious lie, and on that vicious lie this republic will flounder if we do not tackle it, front and center, now."
June 12, 1998, Address to the Iowa Republican Party Convention
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"If God Almighty is the source of our rights, if His authority is what gives us the right to lay claim to our liberty, then it is quite clear that an issue like abortion is not just a political hot potato. It's not just a question for situational ethics. It's not a question you decide by analyzing the mother's circumstances and the child's state of development. It's a question that was decided for us when this nation began. Our rights come from the choice of God, not from our mother's choice. We have no right to take the lives of unborn children in the womb. We will not restore America's conscience until we bring abortion to an end in this country!"
March 1998 Speech to the New Jersey Right to Life Conference
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"And now I watch as those who claimed, over the years, to be fighting for the dignity and liberation and the right treatment of women in the workplace and elsewhere stand silently by while fresh example upon fresh example heap up on the doorstep of the highest places of the land. And they silently pretend that they should look away because, "Well, this person has been so good for women." I actually think that they should have been given pause before now, but many of them being on the wrong side of the abortion issue, it never occurred to them that it is impossible to say that somebody is good for women if they are not good for the children they bear in their womb."
November 20, 1997, Focus on the Family speech to the physicians conference
(transcript and audio)
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Excerpt:
"Somebody's going to have to explain to me, one of these days, why it is that we believe that it changes something when we apply a label to it from Latin or Greek. What is the Latin word for 'infant?' 'Fetus.' Why does an infant cease to be a human being because you call it a 'fetus'? Why does an infant just born, a newborn, cease to be a baby because you call it a 'neonate'? And why is the act of taking its life no longer murder because you translate it into a dead language? Dead language. Dead baby. Is this an equation? I don't think so."
August 11, 1996, "Declaration Principles Reborn"
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"And of course the issue that represents it most starkly, the abortion issue, puts it right there in the most intimate form of all. And they stand up and make the argument in that form as well: 'Well, this body, it belongs to you, it's your choice, and you get to decide.' And then you have to go back and look at that Declaration and ask yourself not how it applies to this government and that law and that politics, but how does it apply to us?"
January 27, 1996, Speech to the Louisiana Republican Convention
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"And He is clear. If that is where we stand, then some things are pretty clear. When they come to us in the abortion doctrine, and they say that they will substitute the woman's choice for God's choice in determining the humanity of an unborn child, I will look them in the eye, and I will say, 'You stand with that false god of choice, I will stand with the God of justice!'"
November 4, 1995, Black Americans for Life Banquet
(transcript)
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Excerpt:
"Now why do I go through all of this? See, I go through it all because I think it's important that, when we are thinking about the most important issues we face, we do so in the context of the most important principles we represent. 'Cause I think in the end that's how you define the most important issues, isn't it? The most important threats, the most important dangers, the most important problems are those which especially undermine and threaten those principles which are most important to your existence.
"And I believe that's why we're here tonight. I know that's what keeps me going every day. And I also know that it is the reason why the cause in which we have gathered must ultimately prevail. For, this is the simple truth of America's situation. We must reject the destructive logic of abortion, or we will lose our Republic. There is no middle ground. This Republic rests on the premise that rights and freedom come from God. The notion of abortion rights rests on the premise that the humanity and rights of the child come from its mother's choice. And you can't have it both ways. It's either human choice or God's choice that is the foundation for our liberty."
1984 "Mexico City Policy"
September 17, 2007, Values Voter Ft. Lauderdale presidential debate
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"Well, actually, it was a policy of the Mexico City Population Conference. I was the deputy chairman of the delegation. I actually negotiated the language into the final resolution at that conference."
Defense of Terri Schiavo
March 29, 2005, "Jeb Bush is courting dereliction of duty"
(WorldNetDaily essay)
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Excerpt:
"Since Florida's highest law grants him supreme executive power, the governor's action would be lawful. No one in the Florida judiciary can say otherwise, since the whole basis for the doctrine of judicial review (which they invoked when they refused to apply "Terri's law") is that any law at variance with the constitution is no law at all.
"Gov. Bush has said that he recognizes the injustice being done to Terri Schiavo but is powerless to stop it. He is obviously not powerless, and his view of injustice is fully warranted."
March 24, 2005, "Alan Keyes: In defense of Terri Schiavo"
(WorldNetDaily essay)
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Excerpt:
"Despite action by the Congress to create an opportunity for the federal courts to review and correct the violation of Terri Schiavo's most basic rights, the latest effort to prevent her judicially sanctioned murder by starvation appears to be headed for failure. This is just the latest and the most poignantly tragic instance of judicial abuse tending to corrupt and destroy the moral fabric of the nation. Despite the outward appearance of deliberation, what we witness now as an ongoing feature of the conduct of the judiciary at every level amounts to a judicial riot, in which judges and justices take it upon themselves to disregard the prerogatives of the other branches in order to assert an exclusive and tyrannical control of public standards and conduct. Why is this happening?"
Obama infanticide
October 24, 2004, Alan Keyes speech Life Chain rally, Christ Hospital in Illinois
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"When you have a choice between someone who stands in defense of innocent life and someone who seeks to extend the principle of abortion, even to the killing of fully-born babies outside the womb, let nobody in this state deny that that's not just conservative versus liberal, Republican versus Democrat, that is GOOD versus EVIL and every conscience has to understand the truth.
"There's a direct link here between the practice of abortion that suppresses our allegiance to the future in the womb and the collapse right now, this minute, of the lives of so many of our children in the world. Abortion hardens America's heart. And as our heart hardens, we turn our backs on the silent cry that comes to us from the future as we extinguish the light that ought to be born now to enlighten it. This is the real meaning of abortion, and it's why I don't feel the least bit of compunction.
August 8, 2004, U.S. Senate candidacy announcement for Illinois
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"What finally caught my eye, however, and what we have to spend some time thinking through so that we will understand, not just the significance of the decision I have taken, but the significance of this election overall, what we have to look at is what finally arrested my attention and forced me to consider whether I not only had the opportunity to oppose him [Barack Obama], but the obligation.
"And that was when I learned that he had actually, in April 2002, apparently cast a vote that would continue to allow live birth abortions in the state of Illinois.
". . . . And we have to understand. I hope everyone here will understand what I'm talking about. We are talking about a situation in which, in the course of an abortion procedure, a child has been born alive — is out of the womb, breathing and living on its own — and he cast a vote against the idea that we should not stand by and let that child die!"
Personhood
November 4, 2006, Mt. Rushmore pro-life rally
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"They have attacked our fundamental institutions, and they have attacked our moral character directly with this lie that we have the right to take the life of our innocent children. Now, interestingly enough, this occurred, of course, in a Supreme Court decision. The last time I looked, the Supreme Court has to derive the basis for its decisions either from laws that have been passed by the Congress — federal laws — or from the Constitution. So, we must look at the law. We must look at the Constitution to find out where they've grounded themselves in this matter. There was, of course, no law that allowed abortion. They claimed that they found it somewhere in the Constitution — or rather, that isn't what Blackmun claimed, no. Blackmun actually claimed that he found nothing in the Constitution that protected the life of that child in the womb — that established that that child must be treated as a person. He even went so far to declare that if, in fact, you could, from the Constitution, show that the life of that child in the womb must be respected as the life of a person, then the claim of Roe would fail — that's what he said — and there would be no abortion in this land.
"But he looked — or maybe his clerks looked, I don't know who wrote it — but they looked through the Constitution the way a sophomore would when he was preparing a little paper for school.
"And he found every reference to the word 'person,' and it turned out that there was no context in the Constitution in which the word 'person' referred to a child in the womb. Now, that's interesting. It's a frame of government. Government usually involves adult people, and therefore they didn't find any reference to child in the womb in there. Isn't that interesting? Of course, they didn't find a reference to eight-year-old children, either, and seven-year-olds and five-year-olds. So, does that mean we have the right to slay them also? I sincerely doubt that. But even so, this was his way of reasoning, and as a result of not finding any reference to person, he emancipated himself from the Constitution, started a review of all kinds of laws and practices and philosophies, and religious opinions, because he acknowledged that this decision about abortion had always been made, in every society, throughout the history of humankind in connection with the faith and moral conscience of the people. Isn't that fascinating?
"But he decided that he would take the place of the faith and conscience of the American people and substitute for their deliberations his own arbitrary conclusion that the 'law,' as he put it, did not recognize the personhood of the child in the womb."
September 17, 2007, Values Voter Ft. Lauderdale presidential debate
(transcript and video)
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Excerpt:
"I think the first and most important thing that we would do is champion an amendment to the United States Constitution that makes it crystal clear that the right to life of all human beings, from conception to natural death, must be respected. It's simple. It's clear. It must be done."
Notre Dame Obama protest — May 2009
May 14, 2009, "The Notre Dame Scandal — A Brief Report"
(essay at LoyaltoLiberty.com)
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Excerpt:
"They react with forceful abuses of their authority because they cannot properly defend their action in terms of the laws of God and the teachings of the Catholic Church. They therefore substitute force for persuasion. In this too they honor evil, by imitating its methods."
Crisis Pregnancy Center speeches
March 2006, Hope Crisis Pregnancy Center
(transcript and audio)
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Excerpt:
"Second point is that, if you acknowledge the existence of God, and then with contempt for His authority, do what you please, then you are saying that the authority of God doesn't matter. And if the authority of God doesn't matter, why should I respect the rights that come from Him if I have the power to do otherwise.
"I think it's fairly straightforward. We can't sustain liberty in this country. We can't sustain self-government, if we turn our back on God. We can't sustain our claim to rights, if we do not acknowledge the authority of God when we approach the rights of others, beginning with the rights of our very own offspring in the womb."