With his liberal stances on prison reform and marijuana legalization, Rand Paul could face trouble reaching the social conservatives of the Republican base. This week, though, may have nudged him closer to their good graces. Bloomberg's Dave Weigel reported that Paul hit a home run with conservatives on Wednesday when he gave a characteristically brusque answer to a series of questions about abortion:

“Here's the deal—we always seem to have the debate waaaaay over here on what are the exact details of exemptions, or when it starts," said Paul, waving his hands to the left. "Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a 7-pound baby in the uterus? You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she's OK with killing a 7-pound baby that is not born yet. Ask her when life begins, and you ask Debbie when it's OK to protect life. When you get an answer from Debbie, get back to me."

At The American Conservative, Jon Coppage praised Paul for his savvy approach: Rather than sparring with the media about their biases in abortion coverage, he directly criticized Democrats, and in so doing affirmed conventional Republican wisdom on abortion. Paul concisely advanced the kernel of the pro-life position, namely that “life is special and deserves protection,” in his phrasing. He seemed frustrated with the tendency of abortion debates to spiral into arguments over exceptions and rare cases, saying, “The thing is about abortion—and about a lot of things—is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you're this or this or that, or you're hard and fast (on) one thing or the other.”

Insofar as being “pro-life” is about being concerned with the sanctity and goodness of human life in all cases, Paul is exactly right: that principle has to precede details. But it is because human life matters and should be treasured that the particularities of abortion policy are extremely important. Objections to vagueness on the anti-abortion side, therefore, are as likely to come from people identifying as “pro-life” as from those who see themselves as “pro-choice.”

Exceptions matter because penalties matter. In a hypothetical world in which social conservatives called the shots and Roe were overturned, how would women who had abortions be treated? Identically to people who killed, say, 10-year-olds? And for such crimes, who would we hold culpable—women, or clinicians?

Conservatives against abortion are typically cagey on these details. Take, for example, Ramesh Ponnuru, author of The Party of Death: the Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life. In a National Review column published online late last year, Ponnuru wrote: