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| "In the quiet of conscience people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America." |
A version of the following ran in the May/June issue of MCCL News.
Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to challenge Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election. The former Massachusetts governor and businessman takes a pro-life position that contrasts sharply with Obama's pro-abortion record.
Romney once did not favor laws against abortion (though he had repeatedly said that he personally opposed the practice), but he changed his position in 2004 when studying human embryology, stem cells and cloning as governor.
"The Roe v. Wade mentality has so cheapened the value of human life that rational people saw human life as mere research material to be used, then destroyed," he later said. "What some see as a mere clump of cells is actually a human life. Human life has identity. Human life has the capacity to love and be loved. Human life has a profound dignity, undiminished by age or infirmity."
Romney compiled a pro-life record during his tenure in office, vetoing a pro-cloning bill and a bill to redefine the beginning of life (as later than conception) and receiving an award for political leadership from Massachusetts Citizens for Life. "I publicly acknowledged my error, and joined with you to promote the sanctity of human life," he explained in a 2007 speech to the pro-life group.
Romney believes Roe v. Wade should be overturned and has promised, if he is elected president, to nominate judges who "adhere to the Constitution and the laws as they are written, not as they want them to be written." Romney says he will take pro-life executive actions, including restoring Ronald Reagan's Mexico City policy and denying funds to the pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund.
He says he will support pro-life legislation, such as bans on federal funding of abortion and federal funding of Planned Parenthood. And he advocates the complete repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which (if not repealed) will lead to government-subsidized abortion coverage and the rationing of lifesaving health care.
In all of these areas, Obama has taken the opposite view—he has promoted abortion and undermined the dignity of unborn human life at every turn.
"Let me be clear: Mine will be a pro-life presidency," Romney pledged in a February speech. "I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life." The stakes in this contest are clear.
