Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney talks to the press aboard his campaign plane.(JEWEL SAMAD, Getty-AFP photo / September 28, 2012)
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Due to my afternoon deadline I can't tell you for sure what Mitt Romney's position on abortion was as of Thursday night.
But, treating it like a late game on the West Coast, I can give you the latest updates.
Tuesday: Romney told the Des Moines Register editorial board, "There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda."
Banning abortion is always high on the agenda of many conservatives, and some quickly registered dismay and disappointment — though surely not surprise — at Romney's evident lack of vehemence and resolve on an issue that truly animates them.
Hours later, a spokeswoman offered the clarifying reassurance (hasty retraction), "Gov. Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life."
Wednesday: "I'm a pro-life candidate," Romney told the audience at a campaign rally. "I'll be a pro-life president." He added that he'd "remove funding for Planned Parenthood" and block federal aid to international agencies if they so much as provide abortion counseling services.
All settled? Well, no. Romney's careerlong meanderings on abortion suggest not just irresolution, which is familiar to many who have struggled with this issue, but hypocrisy and cynicism — a "nice doggy" approach in which he says whatever he has to in order to sidle safely past easily riled voters.
His numerous, contradictory statements on the issue are all over the Web, most comprehensively in a 13,000-word analysis published in August by Slate's William Saletan that demonstrates Romney's evolution from pro-choice to pro-life was no simple conversion, but a series of calculated pivots.
Behold:
1994: "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe that Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it. ... You will not see me wavering on that."
1999: "When I am asked if I am I pro-choice or pro-life, I say I refuse to accept either label."
2001: "I do not wish to be labeled pro-choice. I have never felt comfortable with the labels associated with the abortion issue."
2002: "When asked, will I preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, I give an unequivocal answer: 'Yes' ... I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate. … Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's."
2005: "I am absolutely committed to my promise to maintain the status quo with regards to laws relating to abortion and choice."
2007: "(In 2004, as governor of Massachusetts) the conclusion I reached was that ... we should therefore allow our state to become a pro-life state. ... I never called myself pro-choice. I never allowed myself to use the word pro-choice, because I didn't feel I was pro-choice."
2007: I would welcome a circumstance where there was such a consensus in this country that we said we don't want to have abortion. ... I'd be delighted to sign that bill."
2008: "On every decision I made as governor, I came down on the side of life."
2011: "Absolutely!" (In response to the question asking if he'd support a constitutional amendment saying human life begins conception.)
2012: "What I'd like to see happen would be for the Supreme Court to say look, we're going to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states the authority to decide whether they want to have abortion or not."
2012: "I'm in favor of abortion being legal in the case of rape and incest and the health and life of the mother." ("health" later retracted)
What's Romney's position on abortion as of Thursday afternoon? Evidently the same position he's always held: He'll say and do whatever he thinks will win him the most votes.
Pro-choice? Pro-life? Better to describe it as firmly, consistently pro-Mitt.
Discuss this column at chicagotribune.com/zorn.
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