Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Jr.

Was President Obama born out of wedlock in 1961?

The question has been rekindled by the publication this month of "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage" by former Time magazine contributing editor Christopher Andersen.

Andersen has raised once again the question of whether Obama's parents were ever officially married, writing on page 25: "On February 21, 1961 – a Thursday – Barack Obama and Ann Dunham were reportedly married in a civil ceremony on the island of Maui, although there are no official records showing that a legal ceremony ever took place."

Dunham was a teenager, 18 years old, when Barack Obama Jr. was born.

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Andersen elaborated, "There were certainly no witnesses (to the alleged civil marriage ceremony) – no family members were present, and none of their friends at the university had the slightest inkling that they were even engaged."

Andersen further quoted Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, a self-admitted friend of Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham in 1961, as saying that "nobody" was invited to the wedding ceremony.

Andersen also notes that on page 22 of Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father," Barack Obama Jr. wrote of his parents' wedding: "In fact, how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I've never quite had the courage to explore. There's no record of a real wedding, a cake, a ring, a giving away of the bride. No families were in attendance; it's not even clear that people back in Kansas were fully informed. Just a small civil ceremony, a justice of the peace. The whole thing seems so fragile in retrospect, so haphazard."

If Obama were born out of wedlock as Andersen suggests, would he have fallen under a population control policy once advocated by White House science czar John Holdren in which his mother would have been forced by the government either to abort the baby or go to court to show why the future president should not be put up for adoption?

As WND is reporting today, Holdren, in a 1971 college textbook co-authored with Malthusian population alarmist Paul R. Ehrlich and Ehrlich's wife, Anne, suggested the government could force unwed teenage mothers to abort their babies or put them up for adoption to prevent ecological disasters including global warming.

Official narrative

As WND has previously reported, the only documentation for Ann Dunham's marriage to Barack Obama, Sr., comes from their divorce documents that list the marriage date as Feb. 2, 1961.

Divorce courts rarely ask to see any original marriage papers, typically taking it for granted there is a marriage, based on the statement of the party suing for the divorce and the lack of objection by the other party.

No wedding certificate or photograph of a ceremony for Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. has ever been found or published.

Obama's birth story is further complicated by the fact that when Barack Obama Sr. arrived in Hawaii at 23 years old in September 1959, he already was married, since age 18, to a Kenyan woman named Kezia Aoko.

Moreover, Aoko allegedly was pregnant with Obama Sr.'s first child when he abandoned her in Africa in 1957. Obama Sr. ultimately had four children by Aoko.

There is no evidence to suggest Obama Sr. was divorced from Aoko either in Kenya before he left for Hawaii or in Hawaii prior to the alleged marriage with Dunham.

On page 126 of "Dreams from My Father," Barack Obama Jr. described his father's marriage with Aoko in a quotation in which Dunham says, "And then there was a problem with your father's first wife … he had told me they were separated, but it was a village wedding, so there was no legal documentation that could show a divorce …" (Ellipsis in original text.)

The suggestion seems to be that bigamy was not involved in Barack Obama Sr.'s alleged marriage with Dunham because Barack Obama Sr.'s marriage to Aoko was a "village wedding" that possibly would not have been recognized as legitimate by Hawaii civil law.

According to the Daily Mail of London, Aoko attended Obama's inauguration in Washington, D.C., along with her four children: her sons Abongo, a 50-year old accountant who lives in Maryland; Abo, 40; and Bernard, known as Ben, 38; and her daughter, Auma, 49.

Barack Obama Sr. was a polygamist who had at least four wives, including Ruth Nidesand, who Obama Sr. met at Harvard and became his wife after Nidesand followed Obama Sr. back to Kenya.

Documentary evidence also suggests Dunham was three or at most four months pregnant on Feb. 2, 1961, when the marriage with Obama Sr. allegedly took place.

As WND has reported, the evidentiary record currently available places Dunham's likely date of pregnancy on or around Nov. 4, 1960.

Andersen also repeated the Obama official birth narrative that Dunham remained in Hawaii after the birth of Barack Obama Jr. to live with Barack Obama Sr. until the Kenyan abandoned the family to begin his studies at Harvard in September 1962.

On pages 28-29 of "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," Andersen wrote: "Late that July of 1962, Obama departed for Harvard – alone. He did not even stay to celebrate his son's first birthday."

WND has obtained evidence that Dunham enrolled in extension classes at the University of Washington in Seattle on Aug. 19, 1961, only 15 days after Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, and that she lived at 516 13th Ave. East, apartment 2, in Seattle's Capitol Hill area, never returning to Hawaii until after Barack Obama Sr. had left for Harvard.

On page 27 of "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," Andersen says Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham lived together at the birth address that was listed in the August 1961 birth announcements published at the time by the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

On page 27, Andersen wrote: "On the afternoon of August 4, 1961, Barack drove his pregnant wife the eight miles from their bungalow at 6085 Kalanianaole Highway due east to Honolulu's Kapiolani Hospital for Women and Children," supposedly to drive his wife to the delivery room.

WND has established that Barack Obama Sr. always maintained his bachelor pad at 625 11th Avenue and that the only family residents at 6085 Kalanianaole Highway were Ann Dunham's parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham.

WND can find no documentary evidence that Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham ever lived together as man and wife, in Hawaii or anywhere else.

The following timeline illustrates Dunham abandoned Barack Obama Sr. shortly after the birth of the baby:

Timeline

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