In the above video, Paul talks of witnessing an infanticide in progress, in a hospital where he was present as a doctor. When asked about this, ‘Paul was briefly taken aback. “I would have had to have… I don’t know,” he said. “It was probably a fleeting, two minute thing. I walked in, took a peek, saw what was happening, because I was visiting there for an operating room. But I didn’t have the facilities! What could I have done?”‘ (Weigel 2011) I dunno, maybe performed CPR, called for assistance, called the police, reported the murder to an ethics body?
Paul is bragging in an advert that he saw a baby murdered and did nothing. Fortunately, he is lying about this.
Late term abortions are exceedingly rare everywhere in the world, but especially in the US, where, if I remember correctly, only two hospitals still do them. There is no hospital in the US where doctors will abort a viable fetus. In the case a of a medical emergency, they might do a premature delivery to save the life of the mother or the child, but they won’t abort a baby that could live outside the womb. Not only would it violate every kind of medical ethics, but the actions Paul describes are illegal. They are murder, not in the sense of overblown anti-abortion rhetoric, but in the sense of having a duty to alert the police.
I don’t believe that Paul is protecting a hospital that murders children, as this story is almost certainly made up. As Fred Clark notes, this isn’t particularly new or original lie and it’s one that both he and I have heard before. And, as Clark writes, “they never include the kinds of details that would make such stories believable — names or places that could be confirmed, or any other such evidence.” (2012) So Paul isn’t covering for a murdering hospital so much as he is repeating something he heard elsewhere as if it happened to him. In other words, he’s telling a lie and just pretending to have covered for murderers. It’s not actually his story. Much like he now says he didn’t actually write his racist newsletters. (Kucinich 2011)
The thing I don’t get about Paul is not his KKK-levels of racism, in which he signed his name to newsletters calling black people “animals” (Paul 1992), and it’s not his making up fabulous stories in which he idly lets babies get murdered. What I don’t get about Paul is how he has any appeal with anyone at all acquainted with the left. Yeah, he wants to let you smoke pot (maybe, depending on your state) (“War on Drugs”) and I guess if you’re a white, middle class man who is never going to get pregnant or have a partner who deal with an unwanted pregnancy, nor are you ever going to want to buy birth control (Somanader 2011), (which he would happily let Walmart refuse to stock, as well as the AIDS drugs, etc) and are never going to need a ramp to access a building (Alder 2011), and you don’t care about anybody else who is not just like you, well, I can see why you might like him. but that kind of makes you a bad person. Yeah, he’s got some anti-war rhetoric (“Foreign Policy”) and I’d like to see the wars ended also, but I’m not willing to sacrifice the civil rights act (Basset 2012) for that. Also, I’m not sure I’d trust a guy who is bragging he helped cover for murderers.
Alder, Ben. “Three Myths About Ron Paul.” The Nation. 27 December 2011. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://www.thenation.com/blog/165350/three-myths-about-ron-paul>
Basset, Laura. “Ron Paul: Civil Rights Act Of 1964 ‘Destroyed’ Privacy.” The Huffington Post. 1 January 2012. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/01/ron-paul-civil-rights-act_n_1178688.html>
Clark, Fred. “Say anything to take us out of this gloom”. Slacktivist. 3 January 2012. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/01/03/say-anything-to-take-us-out-of-this-gloom/&glt;
“Foreign Policy.” RonPaul.com Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/national-defense/>
Kucinich, Jackie. “Ron Paul’s story changes on racial comments.” USA Today. 22 December 2011. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/22/ron-pauls-story-changes-on-racial-comments/>
Paul, Ron. “Blast ‘Em?.” Ron Paul Political Report. 1992. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PoliticalReportOctober1992.pdf>
Paul, Ron. “Life.” YouTube. 12 October 2011. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkAsLPrnJGc>
Somanader, Tanya. “Ron Paul: Greater Access To Birth Control Makes A ‘Mockery’ Of Christians.” Think Progress. 6 October 2011. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/06/338285/ron-paul-greater-access-to-birth-control-makes-a-mockery-of-christians/>
“War On Drugs.” Wed. Assessed 5 January 2011. <http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/war-on-drugs/>
Weigel, David. “The Ron Paul Fetus Rescue Test.” Slate. 29 December 2011. Web. Assessed 5 January 2012. <http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/12/29/the_ron_paul_fetus_rescue_test.html>
