Rand Paul: ‘I Think Abortion Is Always Wrong’

Sen. Rand Paul responded that he believes “abortion is always wrong” to a question from Fox News’s Chris Wallace about whether – if the question of legalization of abortion were turned back to the states – he would be okay with a liberal state keeping abortion legal.

“You know, I think abortion is always wrong,” he replied. “I’ve supported a variety of solutions, both state as well as federal. In fact, just last week, I introduced the Life at Conception Act, which would say that the 14th amendment would defend an individual even in the womb.”

Paul then responded to the overarching intersection of religion and politics:

I think liberty, itself requires a virtue — requires a virtuous people. In fact, Washington said that democracy requires a virtuous people.

Oz Guinness, the theologian, said that liberty requires restraint but the only restraint consistent with liberty is self-restraint. There’s a lot packed into that statement. But the bottom line is we must have virtue, we must have a religious bearing as a nation. The government is not always going to save us and it’s not always going to come from government.

But if we don’t know right and wrong, I think we have lost our way. I think we become unmoored and I think without the religious foundation that guides us all, I think we have a great risk of going horribly in the wrong direction.

Pressed by Wallace to respond to whether a liberal state should have the right to keep abortion legal, Paul said he prefers both the federal and state approaches:

I have said that we could leave it to the states but I’ve also introduced a federal solution as well. So the federal solution would be the Life at Conception Act – which is an act that would federalize the issue.

But I’ve also said for the most part, these issues would be left back to the states. So there might be an occasion if we did overturn Roe v. Wade – Roe v. Wade nationalized the issue. If you had the court reverse Roe v. Wade, it would become a state issue once again.

“I think it would be better the more — the less abortions we have, so the more states that we have that made abortion illegal, the better, as far as trying to save and preserve lives,” he said.