Is Ron Paul’s position on abortion inconsistent with his other views?
Glenn Greenwald writes about Left wing commentators attacking Ron Paul for his position on abortion:
Writing at The American Prospect blog, Dana Goldstein criticizes Andrew Sullivan for endorsing Ron Paul as the GOP candidate (Sullivan also endorsed Democrat Barack Obama, his clearly preferred candidate) and specifically objected to Sullivan’s praise of Paul on civil libertarian grounds. Goldstein’s complaint: Paul’s pro-life position means he believes in freedom “only when it comes to half of the population” and therefore no “thinking person committed to individual rights” could coherently support him.
Ezra Klein offers qualified agreement: “it’s a bit hard to square the immense affection Ron Paul receives from putative civil libertarians with his intensely restrictive attitude towards such issues as whether a woman will be forced to use her body as a vessel for childbearing.” The premise here appears to be that abortion is not merely one issue, but an issue of such overarching importance that having the wrong position there ought to preclude “any thinking person committed to individual rights” from supporting that individual, regardless of their views on every other issue.
There are several problems here. First, they misrepresent Paul’s position on abortion by simply describing is as “pro-life.” His position is a bit more specific. While Paul personally opposes abortion, his political position is that is shouldn’t be a federal issue. It should be up to the states. And as President, he’d have no effect on state decisions. This is not at all inconsistent with his constitutional principles.
Furthermore, defining abortion as an “individual rights” issue is disingenuous. People who oppose abortion aren’t saying that the mother doesn’t have any civil rights, they are saying that the fetus also has civil rights. It all hinges upon whether or not you regard the fetus as a human being with all the rights inherent to human beings, or as a “something else” upon which the mother of the fetus has complete control.
