Doug Kmiec is a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University, former law school dean of Catholic University of America, and former legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Kmiec's Republican and Catholic credentials have given him heightened prominence as a Barack Obama apologist. Kmiec just published the book, "Can a Catholic Support Him?: Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama," and is currently participating in a nationwide "Faith, Family and Values Tour" on Obama's behalf.

I'm not Catholic, so I'll leave to them the discussion of how one can support Obama despite his radical support of abortion.

But I am a student of Illinois abortion law as it pertains to the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act and Obama's opposition to it as state senator. Most know that I testified before Obama three times about my experience holding an abortion survivor 45 minutes until he died at an Illinois hospital.

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So given Kmiec's credentials, I was surprised to read his frankly daft defense of Obama on Born Alive. From his book:

Now, the history of this measure, which is quite convoluted, is being used to suggest that Senator Obama is a proponent of infanticide. This is an outrageous smear. …

So what does the "Born Alive" Act do? Largely, it redefines what it means to be "born alive." From the time of ancient common law, "born alive" has meant live birth at or near the end of a full term pregnancy with a reasonable prospect of survival. If a woman sadly miscarries earlier and expels a non-viable, but temporarily alive, but unborn child with a transient heartbeat, there isn't a county recorder in the country who would record a live birth. …

But that's what the "Born Alive" Act does. For the most part, it redefines live birth to include non-viable unborn who lack any meaningful chance of survival. …

Where to start?

First, I'd recommend Kmiec give up and simply declare this muddled section, "a non-viable, but temporarily alive, but unborn child with a transient heartbeat," the fault of an aberrant manuscript transcriber.

Then, Kmiec could not possibly have read the Born Alive Act before writing that it "redefines what it means to be 'born alive'" in contradiction to "ancient common law" and "include[s] non-viable unborn." The Illinois State Bar, of which Kmiec is a member, needs to hold an emergency credentials meeting.

In fact, Born Alive's language was lifted directly from the World Health Organization's 1950 definition of "born alive," which the United Nations adopted in 1955.

In reality, the Illinois Abortion Act of 1975 contained nearly the identical definition of "born alive" as the Born Alive Infants Protection Act until the verbiage was enjoined in the 1993 Herbst v. O'Malley decision.

Eight years later, the Born Alive Act would have restored that language. By opposing it, Obama agreed with the Herbst decision that an infant born alive as the result of an abortion should not be protected by the Illinois Criminal Code.

(At any rate, does Kmiec really want to try to use "ancient common law" to defend Obama's position on the life issue? Ancient common law established personhood before birth, at the earliest possible time it understood life to begin, first, for example, at "quickening," or when a mother felt her baby move within her.)

Kmiec is in serious need of his own law clerk. Not only did he miss the aforementioned, he expressed further ignorance of Illinois law by stating, "[T]here isn't a county recorder in the country who would record a live birth" of a "temporarily alive" child.

On the contrary, the state of Illinois requires that all babies born alive, no matter what gestational age and no matter how fleeting their lives, be issued legal birth certificates.

To subjectively determine which live born babies receive birth certificates and which do not would introduce utter chaos into Illinois law, apparently beyond Kmiec's grasp.

As Doug Johnson of National Right to Life wrote, "In other words, in Kmiec's understanding, if there is not a reasonable prospect of permanent survival, then by definition, no human has been 'born alive.'"

According to Kmiec, very premature babies are not legal persons. If this were true, bashing them over the head to expedite the end of their "temporarily alive" status would be legal.

No, Mr. Kmiec? Please explain it to the class.

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