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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Painted during the Democratic primary as weak on abortion rights, Barack Obama is now being portrayed as an extremist who literally supports killing babies.

Both portraits are based on his handling of a related issue in the Illinois Senate, and Obama insists they distort his position.

The Democratic presidential candidate says he firmly supports a woman's right to choose but can accept some restrictions -- including a requirement that medical care be provided for any fetus that survives an abortion.

"For people to suggest that I and the Illinois Medical Society, so Illinois' doctors, were somehow in favor of withholding lifesaving support from an infant born alive is ridiculous," he recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "It defies commonsense and it defies imagination."

But as a state senator, Obama repeatedly voted against that requirement and other restrictions on what opponents label "born alive" abortions. Obama says he opposed it only because of technical language that might have interfered with a woman's right to choose.

Hillary Rodham Clinton argued during the primary that Obama hadn't been vocal enough in his opposition to this and other abortion legislation, and questioned his commitment to protecting women's access to abortion.

Abortion opponents say Obama's position amounts to an endorsement of killing babies, and that he has lied about it.

"Barack Obama is so radically pro-abortion he supports infanticide," Jill Stanek, an Illinois nurse and anti-abortion activist, wrote on her Web site.

"Justifying the killing of newborn babies is deeply troubling," former Sen. Rick Santorum wrote in a column early this year.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor called such statements "distortions and lies."

"The suggestion that Obama -- the proud father of two little girls -- and others who opposed these bills supported infanticide is deeply offensive and insulting," Vietor said in a statement Tuesday.

The dispute revolves around what happens in rare circumstances when a fetus survives an abortion.

Illinois abortion opponents repeatedly tried to pass laws defining any fetus that survives an abortion as a person with full rights, requiring a second doctor be present to provide medical care and creating a right to sue on behalf of the infant.

They argued the U.S. Senate had voted 98-0 for a federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act that defined such a fetus as a person, so Illinois lawmakers should have no trouble doing the same thing. President Bush signed the legislation in 2002.

Abortion rights supporters, led by Obama, opposed the Illinois legislation, arguing that it was designed to interfere with abortion.

Over the years, Obama repeatedly has said the Illinois measure was different from the federal version in a key way -- it lacked language spelling out that it would not interfere with abortion rights. If the Illinois legislation had that provision, he said, he would have backed it.

Now, however, abortion opponents have pointed out that Obama opposed a version of the bill that included a "neutrality clause." The bill was killed in 2003 by a state Senate committee Obama chaired.

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