Rush Limbaugh smeared President Obama by linking him with Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia doctor on trial for murder, by reviving the false claim that Obama voted for infanticide while serving in the Illinois State Senate.

Gosnell has been charged with eight counts of murder for procedures done under the guise of women's health services. An expert on reproductive health has explained that the acts alleged to have been committed by Gosnell do not conform with legal abortion procedures.

On the April 17 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh launched into a smear of Obama, connecting him to Gosnell through a distortion of Obama's record, saying Gosnell was just “doing what State Senator Obama voted for”:

LIMBAUGH:  He was doing what State Senator Obama voted for way back in Illinois ... it's unspeakable what this guy was doing.

The claim that Obama supported infanticide has been long debunked. The Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact reported that Obama “said that abortion should be legal, but that children that are born should receive medical care.” As the National Journal explained:

According to Politifact, an independent fact-checking organization that looked into similar claims made by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on the campaign trail, Obama voiced his opposition to the new legislation as a state senator because it would have given legal status to fetuses and would thus have been struck down by the courts, and because Illinois already had laws to ensure infants who survived abortions would be given medical attention.

Other right-wing media have also advanced the bogus narrative that Obama supported infanticide, including Breitbart.com and Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg, who said, “The official position of the president of the United States when he was a state senator in Illinois was that what they were doing in Gosnell's place, maybe it was poorly regulated, but otherwise it was OK. He voted against, and fought against, the Born Alive Infant Act in Illinois.”