Romney says states should rule on abortion
WASHINGTON – Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said this week that as president he would allow individual states to keep abortion legal, two weeks after telling a national television audience he supports a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure nationwide.
In an interview with a Nevada television station on Tuesday, Romney said Roe. v. Wade should be abolished and vowed to “let states make their own decision in this regard.” On Aug. 6, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he supports a human life amendment to the Constitution that protects the unborn.
“I do support the Republican platform, and I do support that being part of the Republican platform, and I’m pro-life,” Romney said in the ABC interview, broadcast days before his victory among conservative Iowa voters in the Ames straw poll.
The two very different statements reflect the challenge for Romney, who has reinvented himself as a champion of the anti-abortion movement in recent years and is seeking to become the conservative contrast to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination.
Critics, including his GOP rivals, have questioned his commitment to the anti-abortion cause, contrasting his statements as a pro-abortion-rights governor earlier this decade with his anti-abortion rhetoric as a presidential candidate.
As a result, his comments on the subject are parsed carefully, particularly by the other Republican candidates and abortion activists. Jon Ralston, the Las Vegas Sun columnist who interviewed Romney on KLAS television, said he was surprised by the governor’s answer.
“I thought that was a perfect example of Mitt Romney trying to thread a needle that’s very difficult to thread,” Ralston said in an interview Wednesday. “I don’t see how you can be anti-abortion, be in favor of a constitutional amendment and be in favor of states’ rights. … I don’t see how you do it.”
Top Romney advisers insisted Wednesday that their candidate’s statements on abortion this month were consistent with each other. They said Romney supports a two-step process in which states get authority over abortion after Roe v. Wade is overturned, followed eventually by a constitutional amendment that bans most abortions.
James Bopp Jr., a top Romney adviser on the issue and a lawyer who has represented anti-abortion organizations for decades, said Romney shares the aspirations of the anti-abortion movement while understanding that their goals will not be achieved overnight.
“There’s no flip-flopping. There’s no contradiction. There’s simply step one and step two,” said Bopp, who has helped to shape the GOP’s official stance on abortion since 1980.
“When he says he favors reversal of Roe v. Wade, that’s what I want to happen. I pray that will happen. Am I in favor of 14th Amendment protections applying to the unborn? Well, yeah, ultimately.”