Rand Paul has dropped his firm pro-life stance and has been stressing that he is leading the ascendancy of libertarianism.
CNN:
BLITZER: So, just to be precise, if you believe life begins at conception, which I suspect you do believe that, you would have no exceptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother, is that right?
PAUL: Well, I think that once again puts things in too small of a box. What I would say is that there are thousands of exceptions. You know, I’m a physician and every individual case is going to be different, and everything is going to be particular to that individual case and what’s going on with that mother and the medical circumstances of that mother.
I would say that after birth, you know, we’ve decided that when life begins, we have decided that we don’t have exceptions for one- day-old or six-month-olds. We don’t ask where they came from or how they came into being, but it is more complicated because the rest of it depends on the definition of when life comes in. So, I don’t think it’s a simple as checking box and saying exceptions or no exceptions.
And there are a lot of decisions that are made privately by families and their doctors that really won’t — the law won’t apply to, but I think it’s important that we not be flippant one way or the other and pigeon hole and say, oh, this person doesn’t believe in any sort of discussion between family. And so, I don’t know if there’s a simple way to put me in a category on any of that.
BLITZER: Well, it sounds like you believe in some exceptions.
PAUL: Well, there’s going to be, like I say, thousands of extraneous situations where the life of the mother is involved and other things that are involved.
So, I would say that each individual case would have to be addressed and even if there were eventually a change in the law, let’s say, the people came more to my way of thinking, it’s still be a lot of complicated things that the law may not ultimately be able to address in the early stages of pregnancy that would have to be part of what occurs between the physician and the woman and the family.
This goes for the same with the end of life.
PAUL: Well, there’s going to be, like I say, thousands of extraneous situations where the life of the mother is involved and other things that are involved.... So, I would say that each individual case would have to be addressed
That sounds even worse than "health of the mother" if that's even possible. That sounds like "situation of the mother."