“Another Shift In The Works?”: Mitt Romney’s Latest Conversion On Abortion
Is Mitt Romney shifting his abortion position again?
It’s fairly well-known that Romney proclaimed himself in favor of abortion rights when he ran for office in Massachusetts, then reversed himself before launching his presidential bid. But recently, the GOP nominee seems to be softening his opposition somewhat. Or is he?
Romney proclaimed himself a strong supporter of abortion rights both in 1994, when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate against incumbent Democrat Edward Kennedy, and in 2002, when he defeated Democrat Shannon O’Brien to become governor.
“I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose,” he said in a 2002 debate with O’Brien. “And I do take exception to Shannon characterizing my view as being any different than hers in this regard; The Boston Globe recently reported there’s not a paper’s width worth of difference between our two positions in this regard.”
But that changed halfway though Romney’s term as governor. He says his conversion came after he talked to a Harvard scientist about embryonic stem cells. Now, he says his position is to oppose almost all abortions.
“My own view is that I oppose abortion except for cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is threatened,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Aug. 24.
But that’s slightly different from what he told CBS that same week.
“My position has been clear throughout the campaign,” he said. “I’m in favor of abortion being legal in the case of rape and incest, and health and life of the mother.”
So in that interview, Romney added one more exception — for the woman’s health.
The Romney campaign won’t say the candidate misspoke, but a spokeswoman does say he doesn’t support an exception to protect the health of the pregnant woman. That’s because other abortion opponents, including GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, insist it creates too large a loophole, since health often encompasses mental health, too.
“The health exception is a loophole wide enough to drive a Mack truck through it,” said Ryan on the House floor during a debate in 2000 on a bill to ban the procedure some call “partial birth” abortion. “The health exception would render this ban virtually meaningless.”
Beth Shipp, political director for the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, says she’s stunned by those who oppose exceptions for health reasons.
“They actually think that somehow women make up health problems like diabetes, or kidney failure, or breast cancer,” she said, “or any of the myriad of other health concerns that women in this country face when they become pregnant.”
But even without a health exception, the question remains: Does Romney really support abortions for victims of rape? The question has become more relevant in light of the recent controversy surrounding Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin. He suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” couldn’t get pregnant, and later apologized.
But for all of Romney’s efforts to try to distance himself from Akin, when he was governor of Massachusetts, Romney vetoed a bill that would have required that rape victims be provided not abortions, but morning-after pills in the emergency room.
“It’s very important to remember that emergency contraception is birth control,” says Shipp of NARAL. “It’s not RU-486, which people refer to as the abortion pill.”
Although some very ardent opponents say the morning-after pill can technically cause a very early abortion by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, medical experts insist that’s not how it works. Yet Romney said it could “terminate life after conception” in a Boston Globe column explaining his veto.
The Republican platform calls for protecting life from conception. It doesn’t allow any exceptions, including those for rape, incest or the life of the woman. Shipp says if that’s Romney’s position, then fine. But voters will see through it if he tries to go back and forth.
“They pay attention. They learn about the issues,” she said. “And every time that Mitt Romney tries to reinvent himself, they say, ‘But wait a minute, I remember you said …’ They do their homework; they understand the responsibility that comes with voting for the highest office in the land.”
Last week, Romney’s oldest sister Jane told reporters at the convention that her brother wasn’t going to ban abortion if he becomes president. “It’s not his focus,” she told a National Journal reporter.
But comments like that, clearly aimed at closing the candidate’s sizable gender gap, could come as a rude surprise to social conservatives Romney’s worked hard to woo for the past seven years.
By: Julie Rovner, NPR, September 3, 2012
“Extreme Positions On Everything”: Republicans Scaring The Voters In The Middle
The claims of Representative Todd Akin that women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” now live in infamy. But a few things you may not know:
If an American woman in uniform is raped and becomes pregnant, Congress bars Tricare military insurance from paying for an abortion.
If an American woman in the Peace Corps becomes pregnant, Congress bars coverage of an abortion — and there is no explicit exception even if she is raped or her life is in danger.
When teenagers in places like Darfur, Congo or Somalia survive gang rapes, aid organizations cannot use American funds to provide an abortion.
A record number of states have curbed abortions in the last two years. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which follows reproductive health, 55 percent of American women of reproductive age now live in one of the 26 states deemed “hostile to abortion rights.”
The Republican campaign platform denounces contraceptive education in schools. Instead, it advises kids to abstain from sex until marriage.
All this boggles the mind. Republican leaders in 2012 have a natural winning issue — the limping economy — but they seem determined to scare away centrist voters with extremist positions on everything from abortion to sex education.
Most Americans do not fit perfectly into “pro-choice” or “pro-life” camps. Polls show that about one-fifth want abortion to be legal in all situations, and another one-fifth want abortion to be illegal always. The majority fall somewhere between, and these voters are the ones who decide elections.
Bill Clinton won their support with his pragmatic formula that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Then social conservatives won ground with a shrewd strategic decision to focus the abortion debate where they had the edge.
They fought battles over extremely rare procedures they called “partial-birth abortion.” They called for parental consent when a girl seeks an abortion, and for 24-hour waiting periods before an abortion. In polls, around two out of three Americans favor those kinds of restrictions.
But change the situation, and people are more in favor of abortion rights. Four out of five Americans believe that a woman should be able to get an abortion if her health is endangered, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape.
So it’s astonishing that Republicans would adopt an absolutist platform condemning abortion without offering an exception even for rape.
Mitt Romney insists that his position on abortion is crystal clear. In fact, his policy is so muddled that he doesn’t seem to know it himself. So, Mr. Romney, let me help you out.
On your campaign Web site, you say that life begins at conception and that you favor overturning Roe v. Wade. As with the Republican Party platform, you give no indication there that you favor an exception for rape or to save a woman’s life.
Likewise, you seemed to endorse a “personhood” initiative like the one in Mississippi last year that would have treated a fertilized egg as a legal person. It failed because of concerns that an abortion, even to save a woman’s life, could be legally considered murder. It might also have banned in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.
These days, Mr. Romney, as you seek general-election voters, you insist that you do, in fact, accept abortion in cases of rape, incest or a pregnancy that endangers a woman’s life. In an interview with CBS the other day, you added another exception, for the health of the mother.
Mr. Romney, if you don’t know your own position on abortion, how are we supposed to understand it?
More broadly, you’ve allied yourself with social conservatives who are on a crusade that scares centrists and mystifies even many devout evangelicals.
“Representative Akin’s views don’t represent me,” Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good told me. “They also don’t reflect the theological and ethical, not to mention scientific, view of evangelical leaders, who understand the rationale for exceptions: God’s grace and mercy. Akin and company are the political and theological minority, but they have captured the G.O.P.’s platform process.”
Americans are deeply conflicted on abortion, but I think most are repulsed by the Republican drive to impose ultrasounds — in some cases invasive ones — on women before an abortion. Five states now require a woman, before an abortion, to endure an ultrasound that may use a probe inserted into her vagina. Four of those states make no exception for a rape.
And if the Republican Party succeeds in defunding Planned Parenthood, the result will be more women dying of cervical cancer and fewer women getting contraception. The consequence will probably be more unintended pregnancies — and more abortions.
Or there’s sex education. Today in America, more than one-third of teens say that when they began having sex, they had not had any formal instruction about contraception. Is this really the time for a Republican Party platform denouncing comprehensive sex education?
Some Americans don’t even seem to have had any sex education by the time they’re elected to Congress. Like Todd Akin.
By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 1, 2012
“Fantasy Women of the GOP”: To Republicans, Women Have Been Reduced To Scare Quotes And Head Pats
As the “war on women” continues, my sole comfort has been watching dumbfounded Republicans try to explain away the misogyny that’s so foundational to their agenda.
In the midst of the fallout over Todd Akin’s comments claiming “legitimate” rape victims are unlikely to get pregnant, the science-whiz whined to Mike Huckabee in a radio interview that he “made a single error in one sentence.” He was frustrated that people “are upset over one word spoke in one day in one sentence.”
Bryan Fischer, a spokesperson from the American Family Association, complained about the Akin backlash, saying, “You talk about somebody being a victim of forcible assault, that would be Todd Akin.” Mitt Romney denounced Akin’s remarks as “insulting” and “inexcusable,” but accused the Obama campaign of trying to link Akin to the GOP as a whole, calling it “sad” and that the move stooped “to a low level.”
But what Romney, Akin, and their ilk don’t understand is that women’s anger isn’t about “one word” or one politician—it’s about an ethos, a Republican ideology steeped in misogyny and willful ignorance.
Akin’s remarks—a combination of cluelessness and sexism—were a reminder that it isn’t just disdain for women that directs the GOP agenda on all things female. Misogyny is part of it, but what’s more insidious than the clear-cut contempt embedded in qualifiers like “legitimate” or “forcible,” is the sly sexism of disinterest.
To Republicans, women exist parenthetically—pesky asides that occasionally require some lip service. It’s why Paul Ryan can describe rape as a “method of conception” without batting an eye, dismiss criticisms about the term “forcible rape” by saying it was “stock language,” or call a health exception to abortion legislation a “loophole.” It’s why Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith of Pennsylvania can say rape is “similar” to having a baby “out of wedlock.” It’s the thinking that led John McCain to put air quotes around “health of the mother” in a 2008 presidential debate with Obama, and why during a Republican primary debate earlier this year the candidates had a whole conversation about limiting birth control without even uttering the word “woman.”
Women simply don’t rate in the Republican imagination—our lives have been reduced to scare quotes and head pats.
It may sound hyperbolic to argue that Republicans deny women’s humanity, but there’s no exaggerating how their policies bear this out. Personhood initiatives, for example, legally give fertilized eggs more constitutional rights than women. As Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women has pointed out, “There’s no way to give embryos constitutional personhood without subtracting women from the community of constitutional persons.” Abortion legislation like the Republican sponsored HR 3 would have made it legal for hospitals to let women die rather than give them life-saving abortions. And how else do you justify demanding women get a paternal permission slip before obtaining an abortion if not to say that you don’t think her a full person capable of controlling her own life?
Republicans only bother to acknowledge women when they’re reasserting our status as second-class citizens. Sure, they occasionally feign outrage over supposed attacks on stay-at-home moms (while nary a word of paid parental leave is spoken) and they trot out their wives to assure us how much their hubby respects women. But we know the truth—that this “respect” is conditional. It’s not based on a belief that women are deserving of human rights, but on a very specific set of rules and roles we are expected to adhere by.
Republicans can spin all they like, but what they don’t understand is that women can recognize dehumanization from a mile away. We live it every day. We know what it is to talk to a person and suddenly realize they believe us stupid because of our gender. We listen while people mansplain topics we’re experts in. We watch media that presents us as little more than masturbation fodder and walk down the street feeling lecherous stares on our back. We know what you mean when you say “legitimate” rape. We know exactly what you’re thinking when you pretend to give a shit.
This weekend I went to a wedding where I sat next to a woman who was pregnant with her second child. Like me, her health and life were put at risk when she developed pre-eclampsia during her first pregnancy. She was livid. She could hardly contain her rage as she spoke about GOP policies on women’s health. She was fortunate—as I was—to have her wanted pregnancy go to term. But when Republicans mock the health exception, she told me, “they’re talking about me.”
“They’re saying it’s fine if I die.”
Women know exactly how little Republicans think of them. So please, guys, do us the favor of not acting so shocked when we call you on it.
By: Jessica Valenti, The Nation, August 28, 2012
“Far Too Mysterious”: So Mitt Romney, What Do You Really Believe?
Too much about the Republican candidate for the presidency is far too mysterious.
When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favored keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35 percent to 28 percent for the richest Americans.
All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr. Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see “Mitt Romney’s chances: The changing man”). And that is a pity, because this newspaper finds much to like in the history of this uncharismatic but dogged man, from his obvious business acumen to the way he worked across the political aisle as governor to get health reform passed and the state budget deficit down. We share many of his views about the excessive growth of regulation and of the state in general in America, and the effect that this has on investment, productivity and growth. After four years of soaring oratory and intermittent reforms, why not bring in a more businesslike figure who might start fixing the problems with America’s finances?
Details, details
But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper. The convention offers Mr. Romney his best chance to say what he really believes.
There are some areas where Mr. Romney has shuffled to the right unnecessarily. In America’s culture wars he has followed the Republican trend of adopting ever more socially conservative positions. He says he will appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court and back the existing federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA). This goes down well with southern evangelicals, less so with independent voters: witness the furor over one (rapidly disowned) Republican’s ludicrous remarks about abortion and “legitimate rape” (see “The Todd Akin affair: Grenades and stilettos”). But the powers of the federal government are limited in this area; DOMA has not stopped a few states introducing gay marriage and many more recognizing gay civil partnerships.
The damage done to a Romney presidency by his courting of the isolationist right in the primaries could prove more substantial. He has threatened to label China as a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. Even if it is unclear what would follow from that, risking a trade war with one of America’s largest trading partners when the recovery is so sickly seems especially mindless. Some of his anti-immigration policies won’t help, either. And his attempts to lure American Jews with near-racist talk about Arabs and belligerence against Iran could ill serve the interests of his country (and, for that matter, Israel’s).
Once again, it may be argued that this will not matter: previous presidents pandered to interest groups and embraced realpolitik in office. Besides, this election will be fought on the economy. This is where Manager Romney should be at his strongest. But he has yet to convince; sometimes, again, being needlessly extremist, more often evasive and vague.
In theory, Mr. Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex). Mr. Romney began by saying that he wanted to bring down the deficit; now he stresses lower tax rates. Both are admirable aims, but they could well be contradictory: So which is his primary objective? His running-mate, Paul Ryan, thinks the Republicans can lower tax rates without losing tax revenues, by closing loopholes. Again, a simpler tax system is a good idea, but no politician has yet dared to tackle the main exemptions. Unless Mr. Romney specifies which boondoggles to axe, this looks meaningless and risky.
On the spending side, Mr. Romney is promising both to slim Leviathan and to boost defense spending dramatically. So what is he going to cut? How is he going to trim the huge earned benefits programs? Which bits of Mr. Ryan’s scheme does he agree with? It is a little odd that the number two has a plan and his boss doesn’t. And it is all very well promising to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care plan and the equally gargantuan Dodd-Frank act on financial regulation, but what exactly will Mr. Romney replace them with—unless, of course, he thinks Wall Street was well-regulated before Lehman went bust?
Playing dumb is not an option
Mr. Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: The faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: Nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?
It is not too late for Mr. Romney to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it. But he has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.
By: The Economist, Business Insider Contributor, August 25, 2012
“A Debris Strewn Mess”: A Storm The GOP Didn’t Expect
The uninvited participation of a hurricane at next week’s Republican convention would be superfluous. Buffeted by powerful internal winds, the party may be flooded with cash, but it’s already kind of a debris-strewn mess.
Who would have imagined that Topic A, in the days before GOP delegates gather in Tampa, would be abortion? Certainly the thought never crossed the minds of the convention planners who intended this four-day infomercial to be a nonstop indictment of President Obama’s performance on the economy. But the old line about the relationship between the political parties and their candidates — “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line” — is so last century.
Party leaders will blame Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) for airing his appalling views about “legitimate rape.” But if you discount Akin’s bizarre notions about female reproduction, he was only stating official Republican policy on abortion as laid out in the platform that delegates will be asked to approve Monday: “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”
Presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who once was pro-choice, now says he is against abortion except in cases of rape or incest or when the mother’s life is endangered. But his party claims to believe, as Akin does, that there should be no exceptions. Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), agrees with Akin but has switched into “whatever Mitt says” mode.
There is no way to tidy up these contradictions. For decades, since the Ronald Reagan era, the Republican playbook has been to patronize social conservatives in the primaries and the party platform on issues such as abortion — and then, upon taking office, do little or nothing for the cause. But social conservatives turned their frustration into activism and eventually gained a measure of power within the party that the GOP establishment finds highly inconvenient.
Anti-abortion crusaders expect the party to practice what it preaches, even though abortion rights are guaranteed under Roe v. Wade and public opinion is strongly opposed to an absolute ban.
Similarly, evangelicals expect GOP action on their belief that the wall between church and state should be demolished. All right, that’s my phrasing, not theirs. But I don’t know how else to interpret the aim of officeholders such as Akin, who has spent his 12 years in Congress fighting to increase the role of religion in government. “At the heart of liberalism,” he once said, “really is a hatred for God.”
The Republican Party also welcomed the energy, enthusiasm and votes of the tea party movement. Was the GOP establishment ever really serious about staging a “second American revolution” or slashing the federal government back to what it was in 1789? Not on your life. The recent pattern is that government grows much faster under Republican presidents than under Democrats. You can look it up.
Patronizing the tea party and enlisting many of its adherents as candidates helped the GOP win an impressive string of victories in 2010 and take control of the House of Representatives. But Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has been struggling ever since to control unruly freshmen to whom the unthinkable — triggering a catastrophic default on U.S. government debt, for example — sounds like a plan.
Tension between idealists and pragmatists is inevitable in politics, but the struggle taking place within today’s Republican Party is extreme. The GOP believes in limited government that stays out of our business and lets us live our lives — but also wants to police every pregnancy in the land. The party says it wants to cut wasteful federal spending — but also insists on showering the Pentagon with billions for weapons systems the generals don’t even want. The party says it wants to balance the budget — but endorses a plan, authored by Ryan, that cuts taxes for the wealthy without specifying the offsetting budget cuts that would be required to keep deficits from ballooning out of control.
Being a “big tent” party is never easy. The GOP, for all of its divisions, is full of energy and passion. What unites the various factions is the task of defeating Obama, and on this point there will be no dissent in Tampa.
But why does the Republican Party seek power? What does it really stand for? What does it hope to accomplish? What kind of America does it envision?
Keep an eye on that storm track as Isaac plows toward Florida. Maybe the elusive answers to those questions are blowin’ in the wind.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 23, 2012
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