By Mitt Romney | July 26, 2005
YESTERDAY I vetoed a bill that the Legislature forwarded to my desk.
Though described by its sponsors as a measure relating to
contraception, there is more to it than that. The bill does not
involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes
would also terminate life after conception.
Signing such a measure into law would violate the promise I made to
the citizens of Massachusetts when I ran for governor. I pledged that
I would not change our abortion laws either to restrict abortion or to
facilitate it. What's more, this particular bill does not require
parental consent even for young teenagers. It disregards not only the
seriousness of abortion but the importance of parental involvement and
so would weaken a protection I am committed to uphold.
I have spoken with medical professionals to determine whether the drug
contemplated under the bill would simply prevent conception or whether
it would also terminate a living embryo after conception. Once it
became clear that the latter was the case, my decision was
straightforward. I will honor the commitment I made during my
campaign: While I do not favor abortion, I will not change the state's
abortion laws.
I understand that my views on laws governing abortion set me in the
minority in our Commonwealth. I am prolife. I believe that abortion is
the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life
of the mother. I wish the people of America agreed, and that the laws
of our nation could reflect that view. But while the nation remains so
divided over abortion, I believe that the states, through the
democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws and not
have them dictated by judicial mandate.
Because Massachusetts is decidedly prochoice, I have respected the
state's democratically held view. I have not attempted to impose my
own views on the prochoice majority.
For all the conflicting views on this issue, it speaks well of our
country that we recognize abortion as a problem. The law may call it a
right, but no one ever called it a good, and, 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.
You can't be a prolife governor in a prochoice state without
understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on
both sides of the question. Many women considering abortions face
terrible pressures, hurts, and fears; we should come to their aid with
all the resourcefulness and empathy we can offer. At the same time,
the starting point should be the innocence and vulnerability of the
child waiting to be born.
In some respects, these convictions have evolved and deepened during
my time as governor. In considering the issue of embryo cloning and
embryo farming, I saw where the harsh logic of abortion can lead -- to
the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material
or a commodity to be exploited.
I have also observed the bitterness and fierce anger that still linger
32 years after Roe v. Wade. The majority in the US Supreme Court's
Casey opinion assured us this would pass away as Americans learned to
live with abortion on demand. But this has proved a false hope.
There is much in the abortion controversy that America's founders
would not recognize. Above all, those who wrote our Constitution would
wonder why the federal courts had peremptorily removed the matter from
the authority of the elected branches of government. The federal
system left to us by the Constitution allows people of different
states to make their own choices on matters of controversy, thus
avoiding the bitter battles engendered by ''one size fits all"
judicial pronouncements. A federalist approach would allow such
disputes to be settled by the citizens and elected representatives of
each state, and appropriately defer to democratic governance.
Except on matters of the starkest clarity like the issue of banning
partial-birth abortions, there is not now a decisive national
consensus on abortion. Some parts of the country have prolife
majorities, others have prochoice majorities. People of good faith on
both sides of the issue should be able to make and advance their case
in democratic forums -- with civility, mutual respect, and confidence
that democratic majorities will prevail. We will never have peace on
the abortion issue, much less a consensus of conscience, until
democracy is allowed to work its way.
Mitt Romney is governor of Massachusetts.
