I am not claiming that.
I am claiming that saying "live begins at conception is scientific argument/consensus" is silly.

Of course it's consistent once you notice women's rights to decide about their lives is worth something. This something in many people's view is worth more than say 1 week zygote. The reason is that 1week zygote isn't living organism in any sense and commitment of 9month of pregnancy is huge.
Once the baby is born the argument disappears because the woman isn't forced to take care of the baby, she can send the baby to orphanage for example.

Both stances:
a)"life, don't kill ever!" and:
b)"not life, kill freely"

are radical, reasonable people are somewhere in between.

liberals start with the outcomes they want or see as correct, and try to engineer a system to get there. libertarians start at the beginning and try to build a system that's logical and fair so that it can produce acceptable outcomes.

getting the federal govt out of abortion and marriage is consistent with libertarianism even if it leads to short-term negatives. the next step would be to get the states out of them.

Life at conception or otherwise is sort of a dry topic which is not particularly interesting. But claiming that zygotes are alive *because* newborns are (which is a justification I've heard Paul give, and which you're sort of mirroring here) just strikes me as a little silly.

But that's just an amusing diversion.

Like Case Closed, I'm more interested in hearing about Paul's bold stand against Griswold. Well, who knows: Paul, as far as I know, is not on the record on the subject specifically, but it seems fair to conclude that this is another decision he'd throw back to the states.

I'm sure he would like the federal gov't out of it. But implying that this means he's against contraception is hilarious, and further implying that it is realistic that any state would outlaw contraceptives in that scenario is also hilarious.

From his book, Liberty Defined, on the morning after pill:

So if we are ever to have fewer abortions, society must change again. The law will not accomplish that. However, that does not mean that the states shouldn't be allowed to write laws dealing with abortion. Very early pregnancies and victims of rape can be treated with the day after pill, which is nothing more than using birth control pills in a special manner. These very early pregnancies could never be policed, regardless. Such circumstances would be dealt with by each individual making his or her own moral choice.

+1

Care to point the quote I made up in your opinion ? I don't know which one you mean.

Ron Paul says it's "scientific statement" that life begins at conception:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auwq_...eature=related (at the end)

I call it dumb.
I am not saying some scientists are not arguing about what definition of life one should adopt.

Once you define it you review all the laws too. It's not like "hee-haw, here is my definition and I want all the laws to apply this definition from now on". Law doesn't work that way, which by the way is the reason RP doesn't like courts.

Serious question, I suck at history/politics, but doesn't RP want a solution to take power away from the federal government and give more power back to the states like how it was supposed to be?

by the same logic should we charge a doctor with murder when he kills a baby who survives an abortion? it's not the mom's problem or choice anymore, right?

I don't really want governments paying for or banning abortion, but sending it to the states is just as good as banning it, because some states will ban it.

There's no way RP doesn't know that. So is he being intellectually dishonest in his position or is he a massive bonehead who doesn't live in reality?

Sound nice. Now how this system would work against slavery or race discrimination, who would enforce those people rights ? Who should make sure that people of the same sex aren't forbidden to visit their partner in the hospital ? States won't do that. You need the fed.

You think it should be so but...
a)There was this racial segregation thing as late as in 50' in some states but fortunately there was fed and SCOTUS;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v...d_of_Education

b)Do you know those rights police read to you and that you can be silent ?
You still wouldn't get that in many states if it wasn't for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_v._Arizona

c)Slavery... some states wanted that I am sure you know that one, fed didn't agree...

d)or maybe you know that every state has to provide you with defender once you are in trouble ? If it wasn't for fed you still wouldn't get that in some sates, fortunately:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright

It's not good when states or any small community votes on freedoms people should have. If fed is good for anything it's for enforcing those freedoms regardless of how intolerant given community is. I think most libertarians sees it that way too. At least those who really want more liberty to people.

I don't know if any baby can really survive abortion. I am not saying it can't I just don't know if it could live longer than few hours or w/e that is. My stance on abortion is that it should be illegal starting form some stage of pregnancy so I wouldn't have that problem at all.

huh? he's saying it's not his call as (representative of) the federal govt. he may think it's wrong, but what if he's wrong? giving the federal govt the power to try and make it right isn't worth it.

I'm sure RP knows the merits of the federal government but should the government really be concerned with marriage and abortion?

If only there was this document that we could write down all the things we think the federal government should have a say in and if we get enough people to agree then we add things to it. Anything not included can be left up to the states to decide, I mean after all it's like 50 small USAs only your allowed to leave em

What's an argument for giving it to the states ?
You can give the right to decide to:
a)fed
b)states
c)actual people (mother's and doctors)

I don't see why you would choose b) for any reason other than maximize areas with abortion ban.
Voting on people liberties in smaller communities is the best way to have liberties taken away from people because there bound to be some intolerant communities.

Nah, Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution so he will end the entire federal government. Then states will reinstitute slavery and take away women's right to vote.

Except Paul believes it's better for the states to have the power in all other instances too. If you give the federal government power to legalize abortion, clearly you give them the power to end it also. There is no c) option for the federal government. They can either stay out and leave the power to the states for b), or seize this power and have a). The only way to have c) is for the federal government to leave the power to the states, and then the state government to leave the power to local communities.

Source

You have the right idea that c) would bring maximum liberty. But b) is just incrementally worse on the way to a) which is the worst option.

fyp

Voting on people's liberties in smaller communities is the best way to preserve liberty for some people, because there's bound to be some enlightened communities. Voting on people's liberties at the federal level is the most likely way for those liberties to be taken away from all people. In a May 2009 Gallup poll, 51% of Americans identified as pro-life. The federal government having that power should start to look awfully scary.

This is all fair point but I don't agree that giving power to smaller communities maximizes liberty. I think it doesn't because it's hard to enforce discrimination on whole population while it's much easier in some local entity (school, town, state).
I don't see convincing argument in the source you quoted except that author seems to believe it. My arguments are that historically federal government defended civil liberties against oppression from "locals" (often states).
You can say that powerful government is also the only way to enslave everybody but the risk of this is small enough imo and things you give up by not having it plentiful.
The idea that 93% of people will have given liberty but 7% won't which is the situation which will always arise if you give power to local communities just offend my sense of fairness and justice. I would rather risk unlikely 100%-0% enslavement.
Just in case some group wants to enslave everybody else they will get smaller "independent" communities too anyway.

Even if we grant that life begins at conception, there is still a case to be made for allowing abortion. For example, we don't force someone to donate a kidney to someone else, even if we are 100% sure that the donation would save a life, that the donor is the only match, and that the donor would be OK after the donation. We don't even force people to undergo much less invasive procedures like bone marrow transplants or even blood transfusions which are very low risk to the donor and that can also save lives. We don't even force people to donate these things even if they initially agree to it but then back out at the last minute before going under the knife. It's certainly a good thing that people donate and are willing to save lives, and it's sad if they don't, we might even question the would-be donor's motives or even sanity if they decline, but ultimately forcing someone to give their own flesh and/or blood to someone else, even for the most noble of purposes, is rather brutish. It's also the most obvious violation of the sacred NAP ever.

In contrast, the pro-life "libertarian" is trying to argue that a person has full and unrestricted access to the blood, the oxygen, the nutrients, and the very organs (uterus and vagina obv., plus heart, lungs, kidneys, fat stores, circulatory system, and more) of another person against that person's will. I mean, geez, as much as libertarians rage about lazy welfare queens taking their money to live off of, at least they're not hijacking your body, feeding off of your blood, and making you go pee all the time. And yeah, libertarians promise to give generously to charity voluntarily and trust that most people would also, they hate to force people to give to charity, even if they're confident that the donation to charity would do a lot of good, even save lives.

Good vid from May 2011, Kokesh interviewing Ron Paul on RT.

http://youtu.be/RF1PMPbc0WA

Adam Kokesh is the nuts

Odd that only 15% of the population wants abortion illegal in all cases, then, eh?

Not my point?

I'm sure few states would ban contraception, if any. But that's not the only aspect of its citizens sex lives that states are interested in regulating.

I'm not implying that Paul's against contraception, just that he's against individual liberty insofar as he wants to allow states to pass laws restricting personal sexual conduct.

It's a point that's been discussed a lot here, in this thread, so I don't feel compelled to elaborate.

Thanks for sharing that quote, even though I can't say that his latter statements make much sense. (Are all chemical abortions fine, since they're just using pills in a special matter? Is not being able to police something a reason to deny a right? Is abortion a personal moral choice?)

But I don't really need the answers, and it's extremely difficult to put together a coherent and reasonable position on abortion. I don't fault Paul for failing there, but only for the negative side-effects from trying to justify his positions by selecting broad principles.

I'm not sure you read the link you linked. The part you quoted isn't something the bill does, the bill just allows states to make their own laws concerning such things. As such, I fully support this as this should have been left to the states in the first place both morally and constitutionally. I am extremely pro-choice myself, but neither I nor anyone else have any business forcing my morality on a community of people who wish to keep abortion out of their community. Pro-freedom measures implemented at a centralized level are more tyrannical than statist measures implemented at a local level. The entire point of democracy is for people to be able to live under the kind of government they want to live under rather than have government imposed on them by someone else. Opposing the rights of states and local communities to make these decisions for themselves is extremely anti-democracy.

To quote what you quoted in context:

The way you picked out that part makes it look like this bill is about something else entirely other than what it is about.