Posted on 02/01/2008 9:14:05 AM PST by Ol' Sparky
NEW YORK -- One of campaign 2008's mysteries is Mitt Romney's free ride from pro-lifers. His anti-abortion declarations are eloquent, as is everything the silver-tongued former Massachusetts governor utters. But once again his rhetoric is at war with his record.
"Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion," Romney said while challenging Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy's 1994 re-election. Since then, Romney and his family decided "we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter." Romney reaffirmed his pro-choice stance in his 2002 gubernatorial bid.
Romney contends he became pro-life in November 2004 after discussing embryonic stem cells with Harvard researcher Douglas Melton. While U.S. embryos truly are Microscopic-Americans, a skeptic might question Romney's statement that chatting with a biologist reversed his pro-choice position, rooted as it was in a loved one's bloody death.
Romney's metamorphosis would seem more sincere than convenient if his policies matched his perspective. Romney said last Dec. 16 on "Meet the Press:" "Every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as a governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life." Nevertheless:
• On July 25, 2005, Romney rejected a law that required medical centers to provide rape victims "morning after" emergency-contraception pills. The legislature overrode his veto. That December, the Public Health Department ruled that private hospitals with moral or religious objections could overlook the law. Romney then overturned that decision, as a top legal adviser recommended. "I have instructed the Department of Public Health to follow the conclusion of my own legal counsel and to adopt that sounder view," Romney said Dec. 8, 2005.
"Flip, flop, flip," the Boston Herald opined the next day. "Yes, Gov. Mitt Romney has now executed an Olympic-caliber double flip-flop with a gold medal-performance twist-and-a-half on the issue of emergency contraception."
"The appropriate response for Catholic hospitals is non-compliance," the Catholic Action League's C.J. Doyle told The Associated Press. "Otherwise, they would be compromising their religious integrity and Catholic identity."
• Romney signed an October 2005 measure to qualify some 88,000 low-income residents for family-planning services, including abortion counseling and "morning after" pills. "We have no objection to the Legislature's directive that we seek a waiver to expand the eligible population to women with a slightly higher income," Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom remarked.
• Section 16M of Romney's health-insurance mandate states, "There shall be a MassHealth payment policy advisory board" with 14 members of doctors' and hospitals' groups and "1 member appointed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts," the state's leading voice for abortion on demand and without apology.
"Romney did not object to Section 16M, even though he certainly could have," Massachusetts Pro-Life Federation President Jerry Zandstra tells me. In fact, on April 12, 2006, he line-item-vetoed eight RomneyCare provisions, six of which the legislature overrode. While Romney vetoed broader Medicaid dental benefits, he neither rejected Planned Parenthood's place at the table, nor insisted on including a pro-life representative. Romney and his wife attended a June 1994 Planned Parenthood fundraiser. Mrs. Romney gave the organization $150.
• Romney signed this bill, although it did not prohibit subsidies of medically unnecessary abortions. A Massachusetts court ordered taxpayer funding of clinically vital, but not universal, abortions. Yet, RomneyCare unconditionally offers abortions for a $50 co-payment.
"The law exists under Romney's signature, and the end result is state-funded abortions, guided by the butchering hands of Planned Parenthood," says Zandstra.
• MassDevelopment, an agency Romney's appointees reportedly controlled, voted Nov. 8, 2006, for a $5 million tax-exempt bond to build a 10,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood clinic in Worcester.
"He did not know about this loan," Fehrnstrom said in the Dec. 2 Boston Globe. How strange. Ranch Kimball, Romney's economic development secretary, chaired MassDevelopment. Romney could have opposed this bond until Jan. 1, 2007, but did not.
Romney's late-term anti-abortionism "was more than just a flip-flop," said Planned Parenthood's Angus McQuilken. "This was an extreme makeover."
Just as Romney's $983 million in higher levies and fees mock his assertion not to have raised taxes, abortion is yet another area where a grand canyon separates Romney's words and deeds.
Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
I’m so glad right to lifers didn’t chastise me when I became pro-life as some are doing here.
All in all, i’d rather a late convert than a guy who believes in using federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and limiting Wisconsin right to life’s free speech.
“Romney’s free ride from pro-lifers”
Haven’t noticed it myself. It seems like they are all over him.
I don’t think this is Romney’s year. He’s going to have to play the role of Reagan in 1976 before he gets the role of Reagan in 1980.
Someone should tell Deroy his candidate is gone so he can stop shilling for him now.
Although since his candidate was sunk for his pro-abortion position, I guess he’s a bit bitter about that.
But if he thinks Romney has gotten a “pass”, he’s not very well read. Romney has been castigated for his past views on the subject, and it’s most likely what has kept him from running away with the nomination.
Which is sad because he IS pro-life, people do change, and we’ve rejected a great person who was with us on our important issues out of fear that he was not telling us the truth, only to run to people who if they are telling us the truth are not people we really want to support.
Apparently that same conversation changed his mind on abortion, guns, gays, global warming, limited government and the Reagan Revolution.
Must have been some conversion. /sarc
Here, Deroy provides the truth of the matter -- that Romney DID support the hospital's desire. But once the legislature overturned him, there was no rational legal basis for the Public Health Department decision, and Romney took sound legal advice to implement the law as written, bad as it was. No court has found his legal council to be wrong about that decision.
The Romulan’s abortion stance was to put the unborn in “Ol’ Sparky” and pull the switch (Ol’ Sparky was also the name of the electric chair in either Georgia or Alabama).
Nobody here is criticizing those that have genuine conversions.
But pardon us for being skeptical of those like Romney that ‘find Jesus’ the day before their parole hearing.
“Trust me. I will be good. I found Jesus last week.”
Once they decided to offer any medical services to the expanded population, by court order that had to include legal abortion services, including the morning-after pill.
Romney got a pass? BAWAHAHAHA
He’s either a convert or a liar. The YouTube vids are all over FR and the net. We all know he supported abortion. Thats not the question, the question is what does he believe now.
If the founder of the National Right To Life (Willkes) and the writer of the GOP pro-life plank (Bopp) say he’s a convert than I welcome him to the right side and suport him as the only way to stop mcCain after my guys quit(Hunter and Fred).
free ride? Weren’t many conservative groups bought off?
All the conservative groups, policians, and talking heads had 5 real conservatives to get behind (and they are out of the race).
Now, some of jumping behind the liberal RINO Romney (I’m basing that on reality .. HIS RECORD).
Interesting, how Romney was given pretty much a free pass by the talking heads all through the campaign?
Somehow I missed this free pass watching all the criticism of Romney’s abortion record and past rhetoric.
Romney: I was liberal, and I was wrong.
McCain: I’m a liberal, and you’re wrong. But I support the war, so vote for me and I can close down Guantanamo and give terrorists constitutional rights. I’m so strong on terror!
” by court order “
It would be great, and reassuring for me, to read that court order.
Is it online?
Ditto. I suppose those same people would have heckled the Apostle Paul when he tried to preach at Ephesus.
What was Romney’s pandering in Michigan? Conservatism? Where was the criticism for that from the talking heads in talk radio?
Well, it definitely isn't McCain's.
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