In her May 20 column, Ann Coulter asserted that "[a]s an Illinois state senator in 2002-2003, [President] Obama repeatedly blocked and voted against the 'Born Alive Act,' which would have allowed doctors to give medical care to babies who somehow survived abortions and remained alive, wholly apart from their mothers." However, the suggestion that at the time Illinois law did not already “allow[] doctors to give medical care to babies who somehow survived abortions” without the “Born Alive Act” is false. In fact, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, Obama and other opponents said the bill posed a threat to abortion rights and was unnecessary because, they said, Illinois law already required doctors to provide medical care for “babies who somehow survived abortions.”

As Media Matters noted, when tasked by the Illinois attorney general's office with investigating allegations that fetuses born alive at an Illinois hospital were abandoned without treatment -- the alleged incident that inspired the “Born Alive Act” -- the Illinois Department of Public Health reportedly said that it was unable to substantiate the allegations but said that if the allegations had proved true, the conduct alleged would have been a violation of then-existing Illinois law. Obama himself has cited specific provisions of the Illinois Compiled Statutes in stating that the “born alive principle was already the law in Illinois.”

Coulter, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and several other conservative commentators have previously claimed that Obama's votes against this legislation mean that, in Limbaugh's words, Obama “believes it is proper to kill a baby that has survived an abortion.”