TRUE OR FALSE? YES OR NO?
The only part of that statement that is really problematic is whether Obama’s name was on a list from the health department. The rest seems pretty probable. The health department compiles lists of births. We know this because that’s their job ... they provide vital statistics such as the ones in the natality report. The header in the newspaper for births indicates that the information comes from the “Health Bureau” not from individuals, although it doesn’t rule out that individual announcements could be phoned in and added to the lists they publish. The number of names and order of names may not be consistent from day to day or week to week, depending on the space available and who did the typesetting. Whether the Honolulu papers published the names of all births is probably no. They probably left out births outside of Honolulu when there wasn’t space available.
There are still problems with Starfelt’s story. You can’t rule out that individual births were phoned in. She said, “They didn’t have a provision for paid, one sentence announcement that would be included in the Vital Records.” This may be true for the health department, but it’s not necessarily true for the newspapers. Without having someone who worked there at the time to say, we just don’t know. They may have added extra birth announcements for free, or maybe they did charge. Whoever she talked to at the DOH wouldn’t know what the newspapers’ practices were.
Another problem: Births were obviously published more than once a week as she says.
Another problem: A list from the DOH did not guarantee that these children were only born in Hawaii. Since no place of birth is listed, these children, including Obama could be born anywhere. As long as the family has a Hawaiian address, they could register the birth in Hawaii.
Another problem: She claims: “At the time, if a child was born outside a hospital, the family would have 30 days to apply for a birth certificate and Vital Records would expect to see prenatal care records, or pediatrician records of the first check up, etc. They’d also want the notarized statement from the mid-wife. Of course, they can apply later but that would noted as a different kind of birth certificate. I think TD has already addressed that. This information was received by Vital Records the first week of his birth. That suggests the hospital.” None of this precludes an unattended birth from being reported within the same week the birth occurred and there’s no indication that the DOH would have withheld a birth announcement from the list while waiting on statements or health records. They may have withheld from issuing a birth certificate, but they may not have withheld from listing the birth and providing it to the newspapers.
On a personal note, I take a little credit for the birth announcement being found because I had suggested at the time on TD’s blog that someone should go to the Honolulu library to look through the old newspaper microfilms. I assumed if there was a birth announcement, it would have listed the hospital, which turned out not to be the case. For some reason, maybe because TD’s folks were Hillary supporters, nobody seemed to have this idea at the time to look at the library. Newspapers often have “morgues” too, where they keep bound hardcopies of each issue. Seems like one or both Honolulu papers should have their hard copies to inspect so that one wouldn’t have to rely only on microfilm. Of course, given the way they’ve rallied behind Obama, a person probably wouldn’t be let near their morgue.
Thats true as far as we know. It does not mean Obama was born there. It means at least he was REGISTERED there.