I can’t pronounce his name, but I think I’ll just call him Mr. Constitution.
Vivek Ramaswamy is “unapologetically pro-life,” but won’t sign a federal abortion ban on constitutional grounds.
Good for him.
Said Ramaswamy:
My view, as someone who is running for U.S. president, responding to the question about the Supreme Court case, was that Roe v. Wade was correct to be turned on constitutional grounds. It was made-up jurisprudence … it leads also to the path to moving forward, which is, that I think the federal government should stay out of it.
I think I’m the only Republican candidate in this field who has come out and said, “I would not support a federal abortion ban of any kind.” On principled ground, because I am grounded in constitutional principles, and I think there’s no legal basis for the federal government to legislate.
I don’t believe a federal abortion ban makes any sense, and I say this as somebody who is pro-life. This is not an issue for the federal government. It is an issue for the states. I think we need to be explicit about that. If murder laws are handled at the state level, and abortion is a form of murder, the pro-life view, then it makes no sense for that to be the one federal law.
Like Ramaswamy, I am unapologetically pro-life, but have been saying these things for many years.
And so has Ron Paul:
Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but not because the Supreme Court presumed to legalize abortion rather than ban it. Roe was wrongly decided because abortion simply is not a constitutional issue. There is not a word in the text of that document, nor in any of its amendments, that conceivably addresses abortion. There is no serious argument based on the text of the Constitution itself that a federal “right to abortion” exists. The federalization of abortion law is based not on constitutional principles, but rather on a social and political construct created out of thin air by the Roe court.
The federal government should no more concern itself with abortion than it should concern itself with any other crime, no matter how serious. Crime fighting is part of the police power of the states. The Constitution only mentions three crimes: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. And as James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Is Vivek Ramaswamy the only Republican presidential candidate who understands the Constitution? It sure seems like it, at least when it comes to this issue. Not that he doesn’t have other serious problems and would not get my endorsement. (The only Republican presidential candidate I have ever endorsed was Ron Paul.) I note also that during the first Republican presidential debate, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum rejected a federal abortion ban on Tenth Amendment grounds.
Donald Trump—who wants to be known as the father of the COVID vaccine—certainly doesn’t understand the Constitution anymore than most of the other GOP clowns who debated last month to be his running mate.
Yet, many conservative Christians say we should vote for Trump because they view him as a Messiah figure who will save America. And some libertarians likewise say we should vote for him because he is the only one who will rein in the deep state. Just a cursory glance at his previous four years in office says otherwise.