Posted on 05/20/2015 6:41:13 AM PDT by wagglebee
PHILADELPHIA, PA, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rand Paul wants to be president – but abortion is less of an issue for him than the national debt, the senator said yesterday.
Paul had completed a campaign stop at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, where he attacked both Bill and Hillary Clinton with relish, when a local media personality asked him about abortion.
“I will answer the question as honestly as I can,” he said. “I didn’t run for office because of this issue. It wasn’t what got me to leave my practice” to enter politics.
Instead, it was the nation's ballooning debt that made the younger Paul run for the open Senate seat in Kentucky.
“I ran for office mainly because I became concerned that we’re going to destroy the country with debt – that we would borrow much money, that we would just destroy the currency,” he said.
The national debt has exploded from less than $1 trillion in 1980 to a staggering $18 trillion and climbing. President Obama, whose annual deficits have exceeded $1 trillion, has added more to the debt than every president from George Washington to Bill Clinton combined.
Pressed on abortion, Paul told the audience that, under the Constitution's federalist principles, abortion would be handled “best by the states.” Conservative jurists have debated whether the Constitution gives the federal government the right to regulate abortion.
To make national policy, the nation needs to decide “when life begins,” he said, according to The Daily Caller. “I think we go down all kinds of rabbit holes talking about other stuff.”
He referenced his own history as an ophthalmologist who treated premature newborns. “If someone were to hurt that one-pound baby in the neonatal nursery, it’s a problem. That baby has rights,” he said. “But we somewhat inconsistently say that seven-pound baby at birth or just before birth has no rights.”
His remarks echoed his rejoinder to a reporter last month to ask Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “Is it OK to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” Congresswoman Schultz replied that there should be no legal restrictions on late-term abortion. The Democratic Party platform currently calls for taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
Deciding when Constitutional protections and the right to life apply is the key goal to advancing pro-life legislation, Paul said yesterday.
“We just have to figure when we agree life begins,” he concluded.
The first-term senator, who will also run for re-election in Kentucky next year, has a strong pro-life voting record – as strong as anyone can in a chamber where pro-life legislation was bottled by former Majority Leader Harry Reid until this year. In 2013, he introduced the Life Begins at Conception Act.
The previous year, he had been stopped by TSA agents while en route to address the annual March for Life. “I don’t think a civilization can long endure that does not have respect for all human life – born and not yet born,” he has said.
He has, however, said he supports the use of Plan B, a potentially abortifacient method of "emergency contraception," as birth control.
His concern over the proper role of the government under an originalist reading of the Constitution has caused Paul, an outspoken personal supporter of life and marriage, to question whether the government should withdraw from marriage contracts and establish alternate legal arrangements.
Framed by Independence Hall, Paul touted his libertarian credentials as someone who could attract unconventional support to the Republican ticket, including minorities who support his opposition to militarizing local police forces. Such opposition exploded in the city during riots in nearby Baltimore.
“I see no reason why a 20-ton mine resistant ambush protection vehicle should ever roll down any city in our country,” he said on Monday. “There is no reason that the police force should be the same as the army.”
Paul also stated he would oppose reauthorization of the Patriot Act, although he conceded the votes did not exist to impeded final passage.
He was particularly incensed over the NSA's broad interception of phone calls without a warrant.
“That's what we fought the Revolution over!” he said. "Our Founding Fathers would be appalled to know that we are writing one single warrant and collecting everyone's phone records all the time.”
I am not defending Roe. Imam acknowledging what is. States can pass laws. The congress could pass a law but won’t. To deride someone (Paul) for his understanding that abortion change must come state by state is disingenuous. Even the homosexual community understood that that was the way forward. I expect conservatives to be at least that smart.
Go to court with that argument. Single issue voters will guarantee a lib president
If it was your God-given, unalienable right to life on the line, you'd be "single-issue" too.
And the fact is, if every person, born or unborn, is not secure in their supreme right, none of your rights are secure either. You're completely at the mercy of the arbitrary will of wicked men.
If you can't stand for what's right simply because it's right, at least stand for others' rights out of pure self-interest.
Paul, just like his father, thinks states can allow abortion if they want to.
Which shows he has no commitment to the most important natural law truths that make up the foundation for the rule of law and our claim to liberty in America.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...”
It also reveals that he has no regard for the most important explicit requirements of the Constitution he swore to support and defend.
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Life is not an issue. It is a right.
And what we have been pointing out is that it does not belong in court. It belongs in the people’s legislature.
Abortion is NOT legal. It can never be legal, because any purported law that withdraws the protection of the homicide laws from any class of people is null.
Roe says that if it is established (they don’t say by whom) that the fetus is a “person within the meaning of the 14th Amendment,” then Roe’s case collapses.
George Bush had a Republican House and Senate for six years. They could have established by law the unborn are persons within the meaning of the 14th Amendment, and then started prosecuting all the governors, attorneys general, state’s attorneys, prosecutors, chiefs of police, etc., who failed to extend the protection of the homicide laws to the unborn. Forget about any state laws specifically referring to abortion. Just prosecute all state officials who do not enforce their states’ homicide laws equitably as required by the 14th Amendment.
If the Supreme Court tries to interfere, Congress can remove abortion from the USSC’s appellate jurisdiction—another action that was never mentioned during the six years Republican controlled the White House, House, and Senate.
BTW: The official purpose of the March for Life has always been the Paramount Human Life Amendment—an absolutely hopeless cause. The March for Life should be officially devoted to removing abortion from the appellate jurisdiction of the USSC.
Then I presume you did not vote for Ronald Reagan.
You do not understand the nature of politics or the art of the possible. Be as single issue as you want. When Hillary becomes president you will be have blood on your hands.
I stand with Ted. I also work on state laws that address the abortion issue
How silly of you. You are condemning Rand for standing for the constitution.
You can ‘point out’ all you want. It has already been in the court. You lost that huge opening solvo. In order to gain any ground back it is time to do so state by state (oh and good luck in California)
I’m silly? You’ve apparently never read the Constitution. It absolutely requires every state to provide equal protection for every person’s rights, starting with the right to live. It doesn’t say that they can allow some disfavored class of persons to be slaughtered, in the name of “states’ rights,” which is what the Pauls have been pushing for decades now.
LOL...
So have you worked in your state to pass a law you would agree with?
That is misstated and tortured logic. Roe v. Wade is part and parcel of the U.S. legal system. What are you doing at the state level to change that?
The equal protection clause provided by the later amendments are not written in the manner which you try to state.
One must deal with the facts as they are not as you wish them to be.
You’re clueless.
Nifster, a court decision does not determine truth, nor does an authority making a proclamation. They are merely obstacles. A state killing babies instead of the fed killing babies is not an acceptable end point. Is it better to have only 25 states killing babies while 25 do not? Yes, in my opinion, but that cannot be the end point regarding justice. The end point remains zero states killing babies.
And the original start if this thread was political. I am discussing political realities and things that can be done.
Wonderful response.
-30-
At least you didn't say 'what is ALLOWED to be done.' What can be done is not limited by current interpretations. So, I that is what you meant, then I agree with you.
It’s all your reply deserved.
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