Leaving it to the states
by digby
Like Yglesias, I keep hearing from Ron Paul followers that we shouldn't worry about abortion at a time when so many more important things are happening. (Presumably, the right to smoke pot being among them--- which I'm also in favor of, btw.) Furthermore, I'm also frequently told that I needn't worry my dizzy, little head about "Dr Paul's" neanderthal position on women's liberty because he's not in favor of a federal ban on abortion but is rather in favor of letting the states decide.
Apparently, some people under the illusion that "states" aren't governments with coercive powers just like the feds. If your principle is liberty, handing off the decision as to whether an individual has the inherent right to own her own body to a lesser government doesn't strike me meaningful. The only way this works is if libertarians believe that a woman's dominion over her own body is secondary to a zygotes. Ron Paul clearly believes this.
It's a complicated matter, one that involves competing interests in ways that simply don't exist in any other human experience. If there was ever an issue that is too complicated and personal for the clumsy, blunt instrument of the state, it's this one. Trying to split the baby (so to speak) by saying that a smaller government entity is better placed to make these decisions about a woman's body is a cop-out of epic proportions. Either recognize that you believe the state --- any state --- has the power to coerce women into giving up their bodily integrity or recognize that this is a unique and extremely intimate issue in which the individual is the only one who can reasonably be trusted to make the decision.
There have been many compromises and changes in understanding along the way to this uneasy place in the US. Some women are now being forced to carry fetuses all the way to term whom everyone knows for a fact will suffer and die once they are born. It's stunningly cruel to all involved, but in order to appease the people for whom life is an uncomplicated matter of following God's laws (as they are taught them) --- or those unwilling or unable to accept life's complexity, our society has decided that this must happen in order to preclude the infinitesimal possibility that some woman and her evil doctor somewhere will legally abort a 9 month old fetus for her own selfish convenience. Ok, that ship sailed. But for a libertarian to say that a blastocyst in the uterus has the same rights as the woman in whose body it sits is fairly shocking.
It says something important about the so-called principles of those who are so adamant about taxation that they are willing to take up arms, but think it's fine for a state to force pregnant women seeking an abortion to be raped by the system with mandatory intrusive vaginal ultrasounds --- and ultimately, forced childbirth, if Ron Paul has his way. And it isn't good.
More on Paul from Adele Stan at Alternet. Honestly, he isn't a libertarian once you scratch the surface.
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