Romney, the presidential candidate, is a politician vastly different from Romney, the governor of Massachusetts.

 

I've already questioned Romney's pro-life conversion. Anyone who simultaneously supports both the adoption of frozen embryos and destroying them for scientific research is not to be trusted on this issue.

 

His record on the campaign trail only corroborates my concerns. For example, he campaigns as a fiscal conservative but promised a $20 billion taxpayer bail-out to the Detroit auto industry on the eve of the Michigan primary.

 

I have a hard time believing a President Romney would shed all the liberal bad habits he exhibited as governor -- the same habits that pop up regularly on the campaign trail as he tells local audiences what they want to hear.

 

In a series of interviews with pro-life Catholics in Massachusetts, I uncovered a long list of concerns with Mitt Romney -- and they are dead-set in their opposition to him. This is the story they told me.

 

 

Today Romney describes himself as "pro-life," and explains he converted to this position in late 2004. But his public statements and actions present a mixed history of pro-choice vs. pro-life positions.

 

During his 1994 Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy and in his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Romney campaigned as a pro-choice candidate. In a televised debate against Kennedy in October of 1994, Romney said he felt "abortion should be safe and legal in this country," and he believed this because his mother took that position in her 1970 U.S. Senate campaign.

 

When Kennedy labeled his opponent "multiple choice," Romney rebutted that, since the time of a close relative's death from an illegal abortion years ago, "My mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter, and you will not see me wavering on that."

 

Romney thus suggested he may have previously been neutral or pro-life, but he became pro-choice two years before Roe v. Wade (Conversion No. 1). He maintained that pro-choice position through his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, when he answered to Planned Parenthood and NARAL questionnaires by saying he supported "the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade," and "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose. . . . Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's."

 

Oddly, Romney refused to answer the candidate questionnaire sent to him that year by Massachusetts Citizens for Life.

 

By spring of 2005, Romney was highlighting his personal opposition to abortion in out-of-state speeches. "I'm in a different place than I was probably in 1994, when I ran against Ted Kennedy, in my own views on that." On May 23, 2005, Romney was quoted in USA Today saying he was "personally pro-life" but declined to say more. "I choose not to elaborate on those because I don't want to be confusing to people in my state."

 

Massachusetts Citizens for Life was "unimpressed with those moves," and still considered Romney an abortion-rights supporter.

 

Romney has attributed his pro-life conversion (Conversion No. 2) to a November 2004 stem cell research discussion with a Harvard researcher. He now claims he has joined company with other political figures such as Ronald Reagan and Henry Hyde who changed their views.

Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council summarized his view: "For a lot of people, especially Christian conservatives, it's one of those black and white issues. You're either pro-life or not. That's the trouble with Governor Romney -- he's gray."