While Baby Paul basks in the praise lavished on him by extreme right-wing groups, let's not forget that his evil attempt to demonize pro-choice women is a page ripped right out of his daddy's book. Both of them love to speak of lofty ideals -- liberty! -- while they peel off votes by making sure women who support the idea of reproductive liberty are made into monsters.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) certainly thinks so, and is winning a round of praise from right-wing media this week for raising the argument. But framing reproductive policy in this way is ultimately missing the point about who has later abortions, and how restricting abortion operates in practice.
Republican politicians are often asked whether they think abortion bans should have any exceptions for extreme cases, like pregnancies that have resulted from rape or pregnancies that place a woman’s health in danger. (These type of exceptions have been included in national abortion restrictions for decades.) After Paul himself faced this line of questioning in a “testy” interview earlier this week, the GOP presidential candidate encouraged reporters to grill Democratic lawmakers instead, in the name of fairness — and ask whether they would be okay with “killing a seven-pound baby.”
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz replied that she supports “letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved.” Because she did not stipulate a specific point in pregnancy when abortion should be outlawed, some observers drew the conclusion that the Democrat Party supports abortion “up until the moment of birth.”
“Debbie’s position, which I guess is the Democrat Party’s position, that an abortion all the way up until the day of birth would be fine, I think most pro-choice people would be really uncomfortable with that,” Paul said in a subsequent interview with CNN on Wednesday. “I really think she’s got some explaining to do.”
“It’s disturbing to know that the Chairwoman of the DNC supports zero protections for the life of an unborn child, not even in the final days before birth,” Republican National Committee Press Secretary Allison Moore added in a statement. “Do her fellow Democrats share their party chair’s position, which is out-of-step with the majority of American women?”
Saying that we support women's rights to make our own decisions in the privacy of our doctor's office does not suggest we're pinko babykillers who want to abort babies routinely in the final trimester. I'm surprised he didn't drag out the extremists' photos of fetuses or hold up a fetus doll in all of these appearances.
Rand Paul's notion of "liberty" is an exclusive one. Women, you have no liberty to make decisions about contraception and abortion, ever. Men, on the other hand, are free to roam about as they please, doing whatever.
Good luck with that, Randy-boy.
