Vice presidential candidates Paul Ryan and Joe Biden laid out two starkly different positions on abortion rights at Thursday night’s heated Kentucky debate, despite the candidates shared faith and personal beliefs.
The candidates, both practicing Catholics, each stated that they believe life begins at conception, but Vice President Biden made clear in his remarks that he felt his personal beliefs should not be imposed on all Americans of different faiths.
“Life begins at conception, that’s the Church’s judgement, I accept it in my personal life,” said Biden. “But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians, and Muslims, and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others.”
Rep. Ryan, by contrast, offered a more extreme position that played to his base using buzzwords John Heilemann flagged as “conservative filigree” during Hardball’s post-debate discussion.
“We don’t think that unelected judges should make this decision,” responded Ryan to moderator Martha Raddatz’s question about the legality of abortion. “People through their elected representatives in reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process should make this determination.”
In other words, a Romney-Ryan administration would advocate a state-by-state approach, whereby every state could decide via electoral process how extensive or restrictive abortion rights would be for its constituency, thereby making the banning of abortion a matter of geography. Statewide abortion bans could become so prevalent that women could be forced to travel as far as halfway across the country to get an abortion in a state where that decision would be respected.
If Ryan seemed somewhat ambivalent while arguing his position, the reason is undoubtedly because he has had to reel in his own, more extreme beliefs on abortion rights to conform to those of Governor Romney’s. Personally, Ryan is a staunch anti-abortion advocate, even in cases of rape, and he is a co-sponsor of a controversial “personhood” bill called the Sanctity of Life Act, which would grant all the legal and constitutional privileges of personhood to every fetus from the moment of fertilization onward. The implications of such an amendment would not only outlaw abortion, but make it murder, as well as potentially criminalize certain instances of miscarriage.
“If a woman was pregnant, say a month pregnant, and decided she wanted to go run a marathon, and as a result had a miscarriage, she could be charged with negligent homicide under this law,” said Ron Reagan on Hardball Friday. He went on to say, “Certain kinds of contraception would be illegal under this law. Women who had abortions would be murderers under this law. That is the sort of thinking that animates Paul Ryan.”








