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.”
“Nobody has the power to control LIFE....excepting God, of course.”
Last time I looked the Supreme Court had the power to control life as they have made abortion legal in all 57 states and gay marriage is not far behind.
You might want to amend that statement to read “nobody has the RIGHT to control life exepting God.”
The only way that that “argument is moot” is if you accept the courts as the supreme power in this country, with law-making powers they were never granted, with veto powers they were never granted, above the other branches, above the Constitution, above We the People, above the laws of nature and nature’s God, above any obligation to the keeping of the sacred oath of public office.
Which means you’ve accepted a coup d’etat, the transforming of our country from a constitutional republic into a judicial oligarchy, and the complete and utter destruction of our very claim to self-government in liberty, under God. You’ve accepted the denial of the only legitimate raison d’etre of human government.
How ridiculously suicidal.
Only if you accept their usurpation of powers never granted to them.
Murder has never been legal. Murder is not legal. Murder never can be legal.
Abortion is murder.
You've bought the most destructive lies of the Left.
And since you operate from such a false premise, all of your logic, no matter how well reasoned you think it is, can only lead to surrender and defeat.
Since the thread is about presidential candidate Rand Paul, don’t you think that since he is running for federal office, we should be focused on what he will do in regards to abortion as president?
I haven’t accepted anything I am pointing out the reality of life as we know it in 2015.
Please tell me of the pieces of legislation that are currently wending their way through the Congress to repeal Roe v Wade. I would love to know about them. Please list the names of the Congressmen and Senators who are wailing again’t Roe v Wade. I dont’ know of any.
The reality is its not going to happen. 20 years from now Roe v Wade will still be the law of the land. Do you know why? Sadly its because a good percentage of the American public wants it that way. Like it or hate it that’s the truth. So I would much rather at least know that in GA you are not getting an abortion or a gay marriage.
Only laws can be “repealed.” Courts are not empowered by the Constitution to make laws.
Courts only have opinions. If those opinions violate the laws of nature and nature’s God and/or the Constitution, they cannot be “repealed.” They can only be ignored, as they must be if current officeholders in the executive and legislative branches are to keep their own sacred oaths of office.
Again, your premises are all wrong, and therefore your conclusions are completely false.
Equal protection for the supreme individual right is absolutely, explicitly required in every jurisdiction in America.
It's not optional.
Neither is adherence to the laws of nature. Courts do not have any legitimate power to repeal the Constitution nor the laws of nature.
Don’t keep saying the courts don’t have the power. Not only do they have the power they are using it. They don’t have the right but they do have the power.
It doesn’t seem like you’ve ever read the Constitution.
Please point me to the article of the Constitution that grants the courts law-making powers, or the veto power, or the power to violate the Constitution and the laws of nature.
The only way they have this “power” of which you speak is via those who have accepted their usurpation of powers never granted to them, as you are doing.
I don’t want to come across as quibbling over words. What the Scotus is doing is condoning murder.
Thanks. I’ve found this a really interesting discussion. I’ve never seen the problem approached from this perspective. Thanks for your clear explanation.
The understanding that our God-given, unalienable rights, starting with our supreme individual right, the right to live, precede and supersede all man-made laws and constitutions, and the clear words of the Ninth Amendment, precludes that argument.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Notwithstanding what I said about natural law and the Ninth Amendment in my last post, the Constitution is not silent on abortion. Abortion violates every single clause of the stated purposes of the Constitution, most vividly its crowning stated purpose:
"...To secure the Blessings of Liberty to our Posterity."
And the only way to argue that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection requirements for the right to life of every person do not apply to the unborn is to argue what the Blackmun Roe v. Wade court argued, that the unborn person is not a person.
"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.""No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
Even the Blackmun court admitted as much in the written Roe v. Wade opinion:
"The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment...If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."-- Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Roe vs. Wade, 1973
Roe vs. Wade is no more settled law than Plessy vs. Ferguson was settled law when it was about to be overturned (60 or so years after the fact) by Brown vs. the Topeka KS Board of Education. It is an accident of history and a matter of judicial treachery by several justices that, despite the many Republican appointments to SCOTUS since 1973, Roe vs. Wade has survived, damaged and eroded but survived. If Anthony Kennedy did as he was committed (in his vetting process) to do, Roe would have fallen in the Webster vs. Planned Barrenhood decision. Instead, he listened to his old Harvard law professor leftist social revolutionary Lawrence Tribe and became Sandra Day O'Kennedy to replace Sandra Day O'Connor (another faithless "Republican" jurist) who kept Roe alive as much as Herod Blackmun ever did.
No one ever said that overturning Roe would be a snap of the fingers but overturning Roe vs. Wade or any prospective "gay""marriage" decision would be a simple matter of better appointments to SCOTUS making a new majority (perhaps a transitory one as well).
If you hope to restore the Tenth Amendment, the hurdle will be A LOT higher. Full restoration of the Tenth Amendment would have many desirable effects from a conservative point of view but it would also require many revisions of American policy which would terrify much of the population. Imagine the striking down of Social Security, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, and a cornucopia of central government busybodying going back at least to FDR and probably further. If you think Roe vs. Wade is settled law, just wait until SCOTUS might be tempted to a strict application of the Tenth Amendment. Can you spell R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N? The probability is that there would never be another conservative national election victory again.
"Gay""marriage" will sneak in the back door no matter what SCOTUS rules in the pending case. When numerous states have "legalized" the impossible (that two men may "marry" one another or two women may "marry" one another), all those perverts wishing to so "marry" have to do is go to one of those states to "marry" and then sue in their traditional marriage home state demanding that state's recognition of their status as "married" under the "law" of the state where they traded meaningless "vows." Further, the states have shown an increasing propensity to enact such legislation because the morals of their electorates have degenerated to a "do your own thing" level.
Coming next: The right of dog and cat lovers to "marry" their beloved pets or the right of threesomes or twelvesomes of whatever genders (or eventually of whatever ages or species) to engage in group marriage will loom if "gay""marriage" gets the "blessing" of SCOTUS. In the libertoonian ethic, why should anyone else really care /s? Social experimentation and revolution uber alles! Or so the windtunnels will say.
As to abortion, it may be progress from a conservative point of view to allow states to regulate, restrict or even prohibit abortion or the murder of innocent babies in utero in the hope that many will so regulate, restrict or, hopefully, prohibit abortion. Nonetheless, so long as New York City and State, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Fransicko, among others, remain home to fully functioning abortion mills, interstate travel provides the opportunity (albeit at a greater expense than at present) for the continued, if slightly reduced mass murder of babies. That is not the final goal and it is by no means enough.
Even Herod Blackmun conceded that if the personhood of the unborn were recognized then the Fourteenth Amendment would require the prohibition of abortion. Nothing stops Congress from recognizing that personhood other than the usual gang of political whores who run the Congress to the benefit of the Chambers of Crony Commerce.
I read your post to my lovely bride.
Her comment?
“Brilliant.”
Thanks for your kind words. God bless you and yours!
A “judicial oligarchy” is in many respects even more atrocious than is the Obama dictatorship but we are living under both and both seem to tiptoe through the tulips to avoid clashing with each other. God bless you and yours!
Having written my share of fifty page “briefs” in representing militant pro-lifers helped. That was an opportunity given to me by God to do His will. His law is natural law. My clients acted accordingly. I have had the privilege of causing judges to have the screaming meamies over the mention in his or her majesty’s courtroom of the Declaration of Independence and its provisions. It was only the statement of our genuinely revolutionary principles without which this republic would not ever have existed and therefore terrifying to the judges.
The meaning, and the problem, of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments is that, in order for them to have any practical meaning, SOCIETY must be healthy, and the people must have a relatively uniform moral code. Otherwise, they will have no clue what the rights ARE that are not “disparaged” by enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution. We have reached the point where about half the people believe that one of their “rights” is the killing of their babies, and marrying someone of the same sex.
If the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are brought back to life, they will be instruments in the hands of the sodomites, polygamists, and baby-killers, precisely because the TEXT of both amendments describes none of the rights they were meant to protect. A healthy civilization was presupposed.
That is precisely what John Adams was talking about when he said the Constitution created a government too feeble to govern a people that is not religious and moral.
The Constitution is NOT, as many people think, the blueprint for our SOCIETY. It is the blueprint for our federal government. The SOCIETY gets it religion, philosophy, and virtue elsewhere. Precisely why the Left hates Christians and Jews.
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