The Liberty Papers

In an interview with CNN political reporter Dana Bush, Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said that he still supports public funding for abortions for poor women:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) — Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNN Wednesday he supports public funding for some abortions, a position he advocated as mayor and one that will likely put the GOP presidential candidate at odds with social conservatives in his party.

“Ultimately, it’s a constitutional right, and therefore if it’s a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected,” Giuliani said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in Florida’s capital city.

Giuliani’s argument is, of course, nonsense. Using this logic, you could also argue that the poor have a right to federal subsidies to allow them to buy a home since property rights are a constitutional right, or that the government should provide people with free access to television broadcast facilities so that they can exercise their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

In the same interview, Giuliani also suggested that the judges he appoints could conceivably find that Roe v. Wade, one of the most illogical Supreme Court decisions ever, was good law:

“A strict constructionist judge can come to either conclusion about Roe against Wade,” he said. “They can look at it and say, ‘Wrongly decided thirty years ago, whatever it is, we’ll over turn it.’ [Or] they can look at it and say, ‘It has been the law for this period of time, therefore we are going to respect the precedent.’ Conservatives can come to that conclusion as well. I would leave it up to them. I would not have a litmus test on that.”

Personally, I am generally pro-choice. I also happen to have actually read Roe v. Wade and find it to be one of the worst examples of judicial overreach ever to come out of the Supreme Court. What concerns me is the idea that Giuliani’s idea of strict constructionist judges includes people able to look at an illogical decision and decide not to overturn it.

But that’s beside the point really. If nothing else, Giuliani’s continued belief that public funds should be used to provide a medical procedure to poor women, along with his belief that just because something is a constitutionally protected right means that it deserves to be subsidized by tax dollars, is yet further evidence Rudy Giuliani is not a libertarian under any conceivable definition of that word.

Update: And thanks to YouTube, you can hear Rudy say it himself:

H/T: GopProgress