[Update]

In his dissenting opinion in Stenberg v. Carhart, in which the Supreme Court invalidated a ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the majority's new application for its own health exception could implicate live-birth abortion. Prior abortion case law discussed the "health exception" in the context of keeping abortion available to serve the mother's mental, physical and emotional "well-being." The Court in Carhart, for the first time, applied the "health exception" to the choice of abortion methods. Because a single practitioner, Dr. Carhart, asserted that the partial-birth abortion procedure was safer for the mother than the widely used dismemberment method, Nebraska could not ban partial-birth abortion without a health exception. Tomorrow, another abortionist could claim that live-birth abortion is safer still (since no instrumentation is involved), and the Court could be bound to find any attempt to ban live-birth abortion unconstitutional without an all-encompassing "health" exception. It is even less invasive to the mother to kill the child completely outside the womb, after all.

[Update] Newsmax.com has today provided an update on the Obama/Live-Birth legislation. Here is a quote from that article:

In March 2001, a bill was introduced in the Illinois Senate, where Obama was then serving, that stated in part: “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.”

The bill came following an investigation of a Chicago-area hospital that left babies born alive to die without medical care. “This bill was not an abortion law,” Freddoso writes. “It did not confer any right or legal status upon any baby not yet born. This bill had no legal conflicts with Roe v. Wade … Born and living survivors of abortion would be unambiguously considered ‘persons.’ Medically, scientifically, empirically, they were no different from the many premature babies who are born in American hospitals each year.”

Nevertheless, Sen. Obama spoke against the bill on the Senate floor. He was the only senator to do so. You can read the rest of the article here.

This is an interesting opinion/article  from Tom Buhs, the The Jackson Sun's Editorial page editor that discusses both the issue of his statement on abortion at the Saddleback debate as well as the question of leadership in this presidential race. 

"In the spirit of the 2008 Summer Olympics, here are the results from last week's presidential gab-fest competition at Saddleback Church: John McCain gets the gold medal, for sure; pastor Rick Warren is a close second and he gets the silver medal; Barrack Obama gets the bronze medal, mostly because he is the only one left. Obama would have fared better had he entered the campaign nose-diving competition.

Good grief. If Obama hopes to win this election, he is going to need a leadership coach. The president must lead. The candidates for president must prove to voters that they can lead. They must demonstrate decisiveness, confidence in their beliefs and sureness in their judgment.

Consider Obama's response to Warren's question: When does a baby get human rights?

Well, uh, you know, I think that whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or, uh, a scientific perspective, uh, answering that question with specificity, uh, you know, is, is, uh, above my pay grade."

You can read the rest of the article here. I strongly recommend that you do.