Born in 1961, Barack Obama’s childhood and adolescence were filled with cultural diversity. His father was from Kenya, a black man, and his mother was a white American woman from Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii where his mother attended college. He spent four years as a preteen in Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, with his mother and his Indonesian step-father.

After graduating from Columbia University and Harvard School of Law, Obama worked as a civil rights lawyer before taking a seat in the Illinois State Senate in 1997. His campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois propelled him to Democratic Party stardom and he delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention - before winning a seat in the Senate by a wide margin.

Abortion and Stem Cell Research

Obama has been a firm supporter of pro-choice positions. He has voted for increased federal funding for stem cell research, against a law that would require parental notification before minors could get an abortion, and in favor of funding for increased access to contraception for teens.

• Barack Obama Speech At Democratic Convention

• Senator Obama Biography

• Barack Obama Senate Website

• Obama Barak Biography

  Learn about Barack Obama's family background, his education, and how he rose to become the first African-American U.S. president, on Biography.com.

• Barrok Obama

  ‎"It is precisely because Dr. King was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us that change can come ...