Great post, Dana. Sullivan has and will always continue to be a contrarian buffoon ... how he's regarded in any sort of esteem (let alone paid to write anything) baffles me.

Freedom and toleration for Sullivan has always meant allowing Sullivan to do whatever he wants at that point in time, all else be damned. And if he changes his opinion, what is allowable is also changed. Sullivan is the pure example of the narcissist.

Dana, Sully doesn't care about your right to choose.

His desire for "freedom and toleration" is sort of Provincetown-specific.

Until he ran for president, Kucinich also didn't care about your right to choose. That he would like Paul is no surprise.

Dana, I appreciate the sentiment, and I agree with it. But Sully is anti-choice, and says so pretty frequently. So he's not being inconsistent. What he's being is dishonest, since he (as you point out) is really an Obama man.

You do remember that Andrew Sullivan is a Republican, right?

As for his two endorsements, he's quite obviously following in the same tradition as the Boston Globe and the Des Moines Register - picking a contest he'd like to see in the general election. Did I miss your outrage over their multiple choices?

Why does everything have to come down to the issue of abortion? If you love Ron Paul's stance on everything but that one issue, at least in my mind, it doesn't make sense to then go pull a lever for Hillary or Obama just because of Paul's views on abortion. It's one issue out of dozens.

Also, Dana, newsflash... Sullivan and others who are at least partially anti-abortion, don't see restricting access to abortion as a limitation on freedom because they actually think about the fetus/baby as a human life. Discussing this issue and engaging people like Sullivan as if you are completely oblivous of this valid viewpoint makes no sense.

I worry about people who aren't the least bit uncomfortable about how our country's laws on this issue are so far outside the mainstream compared to the rest of the world. Or about people who aren't the least bit uncomfortable about ending a human life up until the very day it is born.

Uh, Sullivan doesn't acknowledge the basic humanity of those not born male. To him, that basic fact is a technicality--at best. But for anyone to espouse homophobia is outrageously bigoted.

Michelle,

That *lone* issue is a major one: whether or not women and girls have the basic human right of exercising sovereignty over their very being (A fetus is human tissue, not a human being). Imagine if the sole issue was whether or not someone didn't believe freedom of speech applied to certain groups. Would that be just one out of dozens of issues? That is what's on the table: basic rights.

A fetus is human tissue, not a human being.

Well that's really the crux of the matter isn't it. Ron Paul and presumably Michelle believe that a fetus becomes a human being sometime before its born. You apparently don't. Most people draw the line somewhere between conception and birth, whether it's after the first trimester or when the fetus is viable or simply when it "looks like" a baby.

But your emphatic declaration doesn't make something a fact. Pro-lifer's simply don't agree that a woman has a right to terminate a fetus. To them it's like arguing that a mother has the right to smother her newborn child. Disagreeing with you doesn't make them unprincipled misogynists.

“Disagreeing with you doesn't make them unprincipled misogynists.”

Right. There are people out there who really and truly believe that a fetus is a human being and who recognize that a woman has a right to control her body, but who believe that the unborn “person” trumps that right.

It's not an unreasonably position. It is quite arguably liberal, as it truly protects the most powerless from majority opinion. I happen to think that fetuses aren't people and so these considerations don't apply. But it's reasonable to think otherwise, even up to believing a fertilized egg is a human. After all, most people (not just conservatives) are dualists and believe in souls, so who's to say when something is “ensouled”? Again, these aren't beliefs I subscribe to, but they are well within what is currently reasonable.

We all know that probably the majority of so-called “pro-life” supporters are really sexist, anti-feminists using concerns for the rights of the fetus as cover for their regressive motivations. But not all pro-lifers are these people. Some of them take this position in good-faith.

It's not fair to them to dismiss their belief because so many others hold to it dishonestly. If Ron Paul is otherwise a consistent libertarian, it seems to me that he can be assumed to be a principled pro-lifer, and thus a consistent libertarian, until proven otherwise.

As someone who feels strongly about abortion rights and feminism, I understand the motivation to take a hard-line against pro-lifers. But I think it's a mistake and is only preaching to the converted. Most Americans, for better or worse, have beliefs that place them somewhere between the pro-choice and the pro-life position; and we on the pro-choice side are not going to be listened to by this majority if we mischaracterize pro-lifers and pretend that the status of the fetus is not in question. Similarly, the pro-lifers shoot themselves in the foot in their campaign to speak to this majority when they refuse to acknowledge that women's reproductive rights are also in question.

I prefer to be honest, fair, and argue in good-faith. I think that wins more arguments, beside being simply the right way to behave.

The fundamental question is: does abortion end a human life? It surely ends the life of the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby. Is the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby human? Yes, what else would it be?

Given that abortion ends a human life, it is very much in accord with libertarian principles to staunchly defend the rights and liberties of human beings to live their lives free from unwelcome interference. The zygote/embryo/fetus/baby does not consent to die, and in some cases, does what little it can to resist being murdered in the womb. Libertarians believe in freedom and liberty for all, and the preborn deserve freedom and liberty too.

Ron Paul, as an OB/GYN who's delivered over 4,000 babies, doubtless understands that abortion is murder. As far as I know, we don't have any federal law against murder -- we've left that decision up to the states. The states are unanimous in making most murder illegal (exceptions being abortion and in some states euthanasia).

The crux of the matter is that many Americans are scientifically uninformed with regard to the fact that abortion kills another human being. Many still hold outdated beliefs that the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby is non-human or "just a clump of cells." A few acknowledge its humanity but license its killing nonetheless, claiming that the mother (or doctor) has the right to murder her children if she judges it in her interest.

Abortion won't end until more Americans realize and condemn it for what it is: a grisly murder of an innocent. Restoring it to state control would make it akin to murder, which already has laws against it in all fifty states. Advocating for a federal ban, however, is not out of place, since there is a strong libertarian interest in defending the rights, liberty and freedom of those who cannot defend themselves.

Since 1973, over 40 million members of my generation have been murdered. This is one of the largest genocides in history, and is predominantly concentrated against the poor and racial minorities, particularly African-Americans. Ron Paul would work to end it, and that's one of many reasons he'll have my vote.

Hrm, no edit feature...

Continuing:
I completely agree that no woman should be forced into pregnancy. Rape is a horrible crime that our society unfortunately still often turns a blind eye to, though we have made huge strides from where we were 100 years ago. There is much more we still need to do in affording respect and rights, including in the perception of women in the media and culture. However, once pregnancy has occurred, the question is no longer solely the woman's, because another human
being is in the picture: the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby. Libertarian principles demand that person's liberty and freedom is respected as well.

Ultimately the question is one for the moral consciousness of the American people and the process of democracy to determine, much as most other moral questions are for the people to determine. Unelected federal judges were never intended to legislate. Abortion will continue as an issue until Americans realize intellectually and emotionally what exactly is involved and vote with both their hearts and minds. Ron Paul understands this and is working to bring liberty and freedom to all Americans, both born and preborn.

Here,s the key quote in your post Dana: "allowing states"

That is not imposition of Ron's views onto the entire country. It is allowing states to decide for themselves. He does not advocate imposing abortion restriction via federal law. Since no state would do this alone, (as every referendum and history attests), the issue is a non-issue. Your blowing smoke for nothing.

Dr. Paul never makes apologies about his personal opposition to abortion, and I don't blame him for that - he's and old man with 18 grandkids, a conservative Christian, and a OB/GYN to boot. However I think he's being disingenous when he says states can adequately handle the most controversial (not most important) issue in the USA. I just watched the YouTube of Ron Paul on The View. He repeatedly declares that Roe v. Wade allows unrestricted abortion at any stage of pregnancy. This is clearly not true - he may disagree on many of the 11 points below (probably #1 the most), but the last three flatly contradict what he said on The View. He also says he is OK with women/girls having to travel to a different state for an abortion if they live in a state that decides to have an outright ban, with parental consent laws and no exceptions for rape/incest. Is that not unfair to a broke 17 year old girl who was the victim of rape or incest? Aside from abortion for minors, Ron Paul expects adult women to abandon their friends, jobs and hometowns, and "vote with their feet" by moving to a different state if their state would ban abortion? Isn't Roe v. Wade protection from the tyranny of the majority? I mean, come on - it allows for first trimester abortions, but allows the states to take over in trimesters two and three. Seems pretty fair and reasonable given the modern human society we live in. I agree that no one's tax money should be used to fund abortions. Am I getting anything wrong here?

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973) [alternate] [District Court opinion] [Transcripts of Oral Argument (#1) (#2)] the landmark (7-2) abortion decision voided the abortion laws of nearly every state. Striking down a Texas statute that prohibited all abortions except to save the mother's life, the Supreme Court, per Blackmun, held that abortion was a constitutional right that the states could only abridge after the first six months of pregnancy. More specifically, the Court held that: (1) the Court had jurisdiction; (2) Roe's case was not moot, despite the birth of her child, because the case was "capable of repetition, yet evading review;" (3) the right to privacy includes the right to abortion; (4) since abortion is a fundamental right, state regulation must meet the "strict scrutiny" standard, which means the state must show it has a "compelling interest" in having the law; (5) the word "person" in the 14th Amendment, does not apply to the unborn; (6) the state has an important interest in both preserving the heath of a pregnant woman and in protecting fetal life; (7) the state's interest in maternal health becomes compelling at three months; (8) the state's interest in fetal life becomes compelling at viability--six months; (9) the state may not regulate abortion at all during the first trimester; (10) the state may regulate abortion during the second three months, but only for the protection of the woman's health; (11) the state may regulate or ban abortion during the third trimester to protect fetal life.

On every other issue, I admire Ron Paul for bravely sticking to his beliefs. But when he starts talking about abortion, he fidgets about, breaks eye contact with the interviewer, and becomes a politician. I just wish he would tell the truth and say "I'm opposed to abortion and I think repealing Roe v. Wade is the first step towards allowing states to criminalize it".

Paul doesn't deserve the endorsement of any thinking person committed to individual rights.

Gee, I hope you feel the same way about Reid, Biden and Gore.

wow, you hate ron paul but like harry reid? both are pro life, but one is pro constitution and anti bush imperialism and no it isn't harry. ron paul is against 3rd trimester abortions and rightly so, being that many fetus' could survive as humans at this point. if women want control of their ovaries, they have it, it is called abstinence. not that i am a supporter of abstinence education, i'm not. but the best way to avoid unwanted pregnancy is to not put yourself into a position to get knocked up. try birth control too, it is pretty effective. but what fun is that? ron paul is the only candidate that makes any sense at all. he is anti abortion because he delivered babies and has a different view on life than someone who has not. i won't agree with everything he says but then again i never agree with everyone all the time. once people realize that the repubs and dems are the exact same thing, we can restore our republic, but until then, harry reid is george bush and vice versa, one enabling the other to wage war and death. pro life=no bombs plain and simple.
hohoho, what would jesus do?

Ryan Julian-- Ron Paul does not "fidget about" when he talks about abortion. I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. He says what he thinks in any situation, regardless of what the subject is.

Glenn Greenwald pretty much tore this woman's argument apart already, so I won't bother, other than to say that if you can't recognize that Ron Paul is a civil libertarian, you have bigger problems in comprehension than this posting indicates.

I'm a woman; I don't feel that it is necessarily my inherent right to have an abortion-- this obviously depends on scientists deciding whether life begins in the first trimester or not. Clearly, partial birth abortion is wrong, yet Obama and Clinton have voted to uphold it. At that point, the child can live on its own and is a human just like you or I. That is clearly a severe violation of civil liberties, yet no one talks about that!

This is what bugs me...Paul has said over and over:
-he personally doesn't support abortion but he doesn't think it's right to impose his views on everyone.
-what he favors is removing the federal government from the situation.

It's kind of amazing how people who would call themselves intellectuals seem completely incapable of turning off a knee-jerk response when a magic word like abortion is uttered. The very second someone says "I don't support abortion" it doesn't matter at all what comes after. People like Miss Goldstein make up out of whole cloth whatever they want to make up and then attribute that to the speaker. "But his libertarianism is in name only when it comes to half of the population." That statement is utter crap. If Miss Goldstein would bother to read and listen to Dr. Paul himself on the subject, and perhaps do some digging to find out what he says beyond the soundbite, or possibly bring herself to look deeper than something that has been excerpted by someone else, she might find Paul is amazingly cogent and lucid in the debate. Unlike Miss Goldstein. There is an excellent segment from "The View" where Paul explains himself in depth on the subject, and I, a pro-choice voter for my entire life, found his arguments compelling and utterly non-threatening to the freedom of anyone.

I am pro-choice but prefer Ron Paul over any of the presidential candidates so far. In fact, there are a number of issues upon which I oppose Ron Paul. However, he is the only candidate who genuinely understands and honestly articulates the position that our nation has gone gravely astray from its democratic roots. His willingness to examine the assumptions of our ruling class and why they are continually failing may be too much for many of us to bear but Ron Paul, despite his faults, speaks the truth. Whether or not we care to hear it is another matter all together.

I find it fascinating to hear this argument coming from someone who advocates routine circumcision for newborn males. So females should have rights over their own bodies, but males shouldn't?

http://www.campusprogress.org/page/community/post/Dana/C2fW

Yeah, see the issue is that it’s not one issue (although it is my personal most important issue) that makes Ron Paul unacceptable to Democrats and liberals.

"If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GATT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax . We could get rid of most of the cabinet departments, most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited." Congressman Ron Paul (1998)

See, as a liberal, I want a government that does good things. I want a government that takes care of poor people all over the world and especially at home. I want taxes that support these programs and I am happy to pay taxes to support these programs. I do not want that anti-choice white supremacist, Patriot Militia, twit to be anywhere near my government.

Abortion won't end until more Americans realize and condemn it for what it is: a grisly murder of an innocent. Restoring it to state control would make it akin to murder, which already has laws against it in all fifty states. Advocating for a federal ban, however, is not out of place, since there is a strong libertarian interest in defending the rights, liberty and freedom of those who cannot defend themselves.

This statement only indicates that pro-choicers have A LOT of educating to do. Why don't we just stop killing other animals, plants, germs, and bacteria as well? They're alive and pretty defenseless. Hmmm...I wonder...

I find it fascinating to hear this argument coming from someone who advocates routine circumcision for newborn males. So females should have rights over their own bodies, but males shouldn't?

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure newborns of both genders don't have a lot of rights. In fact, their dependency on their parents and the rest of society to make their decisions for them is pretty extreme. If only we were born as smart as you.

Whether you believe a fetus is a person or not is the wrong question. Thats a question that politicians (and the govt) can never, nor should ever, answer.

The question that needs to be asked is, 1) is there a logical reason thats in the interest of the country for government to make abortion illegal, and 2) does making it illegal infringe on someones rights?

There is no logical reason. In fact, making abortion illegal would be very bad for a country; it'd cause more poor, immature, unmarried...girls to have more unwanted babies. And it is an infringement of someone rights; the right of a woman to control her own body and her own life (against the control of the govt).

Whether you think a fertilised egg is a person or not is completely irrelevant. There is no right answer to that question. Thats for theologians and philosophers to debate, and not something the govt can or should decide.

Most rights are gender neutral and apply to everyone. Only abortion rights (and a few others, perhaps) are specific to women (or to me). Without abortion rights, women still have all the rights that men have, and that's important to women.

I am pro-choice, etc., but the idea that without abortion rights only men have any rights at all is just ridiculous and hysterical.

Yes, Paul is pro-life. That is not secret. However, it's his personal opinion and is moot. I'm a pro-choice Paul supporter. Paul would never use the federal government to force states like NY, NJ, CA, MA, etc. to outlaw abortion just like he would never use the federal government to force Utah to offer legal abortion. The US Constitution allows the federal government to do neither and there is no reason to believe he wouldn't follow it. If you want the federal government to be able to force states to maintain legal abortions, a Constitutional Amendment would need to be passed. I know many pro-choice Paul supporters who understand the Constitution well enough that Paul's position on abortion isn't a problem.

There is no right to kill a baby. Abortion is to be treated like any other murder except perhaps that, as the murder of the most helpless by the person from whom the baby might have expecte the greatest love, it is more heinous. A saner age will put Dana and others where they belong: with the same slime who defended slavery.

The question that needs to be asked is, 1) is there a logical reason thats in the interest of the country for government to make abortion illegal, and 2) does making it illegal infringe on someones rights?

To libertarians, those are maddeningly half-baked questions because both obliviously concede far too much power to the State. The first by appointing the State as arbiter of "the good" over the individual, the second by implying that the State has rights over the individual--independent of what the individual has conceded.

The first question worth asking, vis a vis abortion, is whether or not a murder is occuring.

Which brings up a second question: "is a fetus a human being?"

If the objective answer is "yes," then a murder is occuring and ought to be dealt with like other murders. If "no," then it's none of the State's business.

What lands most libertarians on the pro-choice side of the argument is that there's not really an objective answer to this second question and the State isn't an appropriate arbiter of the subjective. If the second question has no objective answer, then neither does the first.

Libertarians will almost always err on the side of minimal use of State force against the individual, so they end up being pro-choice, by default.

See, as a liberal, I want a government that does good things. I want a government that takes care of poor people all over the world and especially at home.

That doesn't make you a liberal, so much as a Bolshevik.

In short, your goal is predicated upon several fallacies--most notably the requirement of a leader (or an elite class) that is omniscient, omnipotent, omni-logical, omni-evenhanded and incorruptible.

In short, you'd need to find a God and elect it as permanent dictator if you want this Utopia.

Five points:
1) My impression is that Ron Paul's federalism trumps his pro-life views. That is, he has personal views against abortion, but would leave it to the states to decide. (That's how it was before Roe v. Wade. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged that Roe did more harm than good, because states were alreadly liberalizing their abortion laws, and Roe turned it into a national issue that particularly politicized judicial nominations.)
2) Ron Paul is an obstetrician. So he obviously has personal views on the subject that comes from his profession. Can you blame a man who has delivered children (and done how many ultrasounds on those children while still in the womb?) to have more of a pro-life stance?
3) If a man physically assaults a woman, and it causes her fetus ("tissue"?) to die, that can be considered a homicide. How do people here feel about that? Should those laws be revoked because they make those tissues into something deserving of protection? The law has been dealing with this type of thing for awhile, but there are no easy answers. If a man kills his pregnant wife, did he kill one person or two?
4) If an abortion "fails," and the baby is delivered, is it murder to let the child die after birth? That has happened in abortion clinics, and some nurses who work in these clinics testified to this under oath to Congress. I've heard that Ron Paul saw an example of this in his residency (although that may be apocryphal).
5) How many readers of this blog know that the woman in Roe, the one whose case went to the Supreme Court, became a Christian and pro-life activist?

Great blog. Thanks for the open minds.

"We all know that probably the majority of so-called “pro-life” supporters are really sexist, anti-feminists using concerns for the rights of the fetus as cover for their regressive motivations."

I'm not sure I buy this. This is quite a round about way to go about go about being sexist. Sexism is alive and well and not controversial in the least. Every ideology has its own completely legitimate version of "sexist." We've haven't even done the first thing to *really* unpack what sexist might be, not least because you main stream liberals are irredeemably sexist.

But, continually bashing on this abortion issue does give conservative sexists one very powerful tool they will not readily get anywhere else, and that is the capacity to portray women as sufficiently morally incompetent as to deny them the exercise of citizenship rights, if you follow a strict conservative read on what the exercise of citizenship in a modern demands.

Sorry, kids. You need to really start rethinking what can be done with your allegedly enlightened positions. Because they have the capacity to be way ahead of you. And, no, it's not religious. And, no, the religious canaries down in Kansas are not your worst enemy. And, no, your current baby-shit arguments in favor of abortion do not blow away objections to it.

What Republican primary candidate would Goldstein have liked Sullivan to have endorsed?

I mea, he's against 99% of what the Democratic party stands for. He was never going to endorse a Democrat. So for Goldstein's argument to make sense, there would have to be a more libertarian Republican in the campaign for Sullivan to have endorsed. there wasn't. So those entire argument is pointless.

My, my, so much animosity toward Ron Paul.

I plan on voting for him for a number of reasons including his unequivocal objection toward the US invasion of Iraq. A Paul presidency would mean an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. No if and or buts like the top Democratic presidential candidates propose. In other words: no phased withdrawal BS.

He may be personally opposed to abortion but he wouldn’t make a federal law outlawing it because he believes it is not its duty to do so.

A Paul presidency would also put a hard break on American imperialism. Do you think a Clinton, Obama, or Edwards presidency would do such a thing?

I’d also add Paul would abolish the income tax, shut down the useless DEA, and in general give us more liberty and less nanny government.

The Democratic Party lost me when they failed to stop the Iraq war and impeach Bush and Cheney. Don’t talk to me about ‘not having the needed votes.’ It is a matter of principle, something which obviously the party lacks.