Obama, born-alive infants - his own words?

In 2001, a nurse named Jill Stanek came forward and described the way that "babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in the soiled utility room." This prompted a national debate, and led to the passing and signing into law of a bill aimed at preventing the practice.

For more background, the National Right to Life Committee (obviously a partisan organization, but one apparently dealing in facts on this issue) has a discussion of Obama's actions here.

In 2001, in Illinois, a bill was introduced in the state Senate that was closely patterned on the federal BAIPA, to govern constructions of state law. It contained an additional sentence, which read, "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."...Obama voted against this bill in committee. On the floor he gave a speech attacking it and a couple of other related bills (the only such speech by any senator). Although the speech was technically made during consideration of another bill, SB 1093, Obama said that his reasons applied to SB 1095 (the BAIPA) as well. He then voted "present." Voting "present" was a tactic recommended by the local Planned Parenthood lobbyist; under an Illinois constitutional provision a bill is deemed passed only if it receives an absolute majority of the sworn members of the House or Senate, so the operative effect of a "present" vote is the same as a "no" vote.

Now the following audio has surfaced. I found it here, and cannot vouch for its provenance. It is, on its face, the voice of Senator Obama, speaking against passage of an Illinois version of the Born-Alive Infants Protection act as a member of the Illinois legislature.

"...and that essentially adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion..."

If this is what it purports to be, and if it were to actually get traction in the press, I cannot see Barack Obama winning the election. Think about the effect of Michael Dukakis' response to Bernard Shaw's question in the 1988 debate. Dukakis was a weak candidate, and wasn't going to win anyway, but the air really went out of his candidacy when he failed to react at all to the thought of his wife being raped and murdered. Enough people viscerally saw a hole in him that they couldn't abide in a US President that he had no chance of winning. Well, if this audio were to get any significant play in the press, there would be the same reaction.

There is a belief in some quarters that America is a pro-choice nation. That may be close to true, but only for some very specific and limited uses of the term "pro-choice." I do not believe that there is majority support for a national ban on most first tri-mester procedures, but there is a significant majority support for bans on partial-birth abortion. And there is overwhelming support for the proposition that babies born alive should be treated as babies. Most Americans are not going to want a President who looks at protection for infants who are born alive as a "burden" that cannot be borne.

And that, if this clip is real, is what Barack Obama did. The abortion absolutists on the left will not be bothered by that, but a majority, a significant majority, of Americans will.

If they ever hear about it, that is...

UPDATE: The evidence mounts that those are, in fact, his own words. See page 33 here...