Barack Obama has painted himself into a corner by his vote against the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

He made this evident at Pastor Rick Warren's Aug. 17 Saddleback Showdown.

Warren asked both presidential candidates the same questions separately. Here was his best one: "At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?"

Very simple. But Obama wouldn't answer it. His now infamous response: "Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade."

The most adamant pro-abort will at least agree babies acquire human rights when they have completely delivered.

But Barack Obama couldn't bring himself to say, "At birth." He wouldn't confer human rights to newborns.

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Obama couldn't commit to saying newborns have human rights because he knew this would give Warren an opening to ask Obama about his opposition to the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which codified into Illinois law that newborns have human rights.

So Obama was forced to give an idiotic nonresponse, all the more perplexing since he had to know an abortion question was coming.

Obama should reread his own book, "Audacity of Hope," for he had an answer for Warren there (p. 53, hardcover edition):

... [T]he essential idea behind the Declaration – that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can't be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make of our lives what we will – is one that every American understands.

Even then Obama got it wrong. He had just quoted from the Declaration "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Created equal. Endowed by their Creator. Life. But I digress.

At least in "Audacity" Obama was willing to commit to rights at birth. But thanks to all the recent publicity over his Born Alive vote, Obama can no longer make that statement.

It's too risky.

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