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Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina  A friend of mine mentioned Ron Paul is very anti-abortion and would make any abortion illegal, and also that he doesn't like the separation of church and state. Is this true? Can anyone comment on his stance on these issues? |
My understanding is that Ron Paul would not make abortion illegal per-se. What he would do, if he could, is take it out of the Federal Government's control and return the control to the States so the states would choose it. While he is pro-life in the sense that he personally is against abortion (he has delivered 4000 babies as a doctor after all), he believes abortion is not an issue to be decided on the federal level, but on the state level. He comes to that view as a "constitutionist" - he doesn't believe the constitution authorizes the federal goverment to take a stance on abortion. He did vote against partial-birth abortion, but I think that was against the method of abortion that bothered him. I myself am a big supporter of Ron Paul, while being completely pro-choice, but I can live with his preference to leave it up to the state. I'd much rather leave it up to the state then have someone come in and get the federal goverment to declare all abortions illegal.
As for the separation of church and state, that one is more involved to explain as it involves looking at his whole philosophy instead of that narrow issue. I think when Ron Paul talks about not having a seperation of state and church, you have to take the fact that he believes in a state that is infinitely smaller then it currently is. Thus, with Ron Paul, all schools would be private, all charity/welfare handouts would be private, marriage would be defined by churches, not governments, etc. He also strongly believes in the freedom of religion, etc. Thus his anti " separation of church and state" views means something completely different then what one may think if applied to a different politician that believes in huge goverment. Thus, this isn't like George Bush trying to finance Churches. Ron Paul's view of maximizing people's freedom include maximizing people's freedom to worship and be a Christian even if they are government employees. I think that ultimately Ron Paul is against the Federal goverment setting anti-religious laws like banning prayers in school, banning the teaching of morals from the bible in school, banning Christian Cross/nativity scenes on public land. If one only looks at that one dimension, it does seem alarming, but if looked at with the fact that he wants to drastically cut down the goverment to less then 1/20th of its current size and enhance people's freedom, it makes a lot more sense. At least it does to me, and I'm not a Christian.
BTW, I'm not interested in being in a debate over the goodness/awfulness of Ron Paul's views, so I will not respond to those criticizing these views. However there is the slight possibility I may have mis-stated his views, so please correct me if you are sure you know better.