Ron Paul In Iowa, Ctd

A reader asks:

Can Ron Paul do another one of those self-righteous videos and go into detail about a woman who chooses not to have health insurance and enters a hospital with a complicated pregnancy? I'm just curious how all of that would work in Ron Paul Land.

Another expands on that point:

You're right in that this is a Christianist pitch, since Ron Paul's concern for human life apparently ends at birth. From Gawker last month:

Kent Snyder — Paul's former campaign chairman — died of complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer's example, the 49-year-old Snyder … was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder's surviving mother who was incapable of paying.

I'm sure everyone recalls the September 12th debate where the audience applauded letting a 30-year-old man die due to lack of health insurance. What they might not remember was Paul's initial response to the question: "That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody—" So following Paul's own logic: everyone is free to make their own choices and live with their own consequences, unless you're a pregnant woman.

Another:

You wrote, "Because it's based on personal experience and because he's so laissez faire about so much else, this ad really resonates with sincerity, whether you agree with it or not." I would be interested to know what being pro-life has to do with being "Christianist" or what it has to do with laissez faire economic or social positions. Of course, they correlate highly as voter preferences go, but why are they necessarily ideological bedfellows? I ask because I don't think they are. Quite the contrary, I think they run directly counter to one another. If one really considers abortion to be the taking of life, if it is really the moral equivalent of, say, murdering the elderly or disabled, then Ron Paul's position that abortion should be decided on a state-by-state basis is morally indefensible. If government should not be empowered to protect a right so basic and fundamental as the right to life, then what do we have it for?

If abortion is the taking of life, then what is needed is not a small, restrained government fearful of trampling liberty, but rather an active, assertive one to forcibly prevent such injustices from occurring. Perhaps to someone as socially liberal as you, Andrew, the Ron Paul ad resonates with "sincerity." You must think it very appealing to pro-life voters. But, for what it's worth, I am a pro-life voter. I found the ad outrageous, and I would not vote for Ron Paul under any circumstances.