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Mitt Romney: 'I am pro-life'
Saying that because the "morning-after pill" is an abortifacient rather than just a contraceptive, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney vetoed a bill that would allow some pharmacists to dispense it without a prescription and require hospitals to offer it to rape victims.

"Signing such a measure into law would violate the promise I made to the citizens of Massachusetts when I ran for governor," Romney says in a Boston Globeop-ed piece today. "I pledged that I would not change our abortion laws either to restrict abortion or to facilitate it. … 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."

The decision won't have much practical effect. As The Boston Globe states, "It almost certainly will become law despite Romney's rejection; both the House and Senate approved it by veto-proof margins, and legislative leaders said they plan to override his veto."

But it does have personal and political effect for Romney. Much is being made of his description of how his prolife convictions, as he says, "evolved and deepened during [his] time as governor." In earlier years, Romney has supported "the substance" of Roe v. Wade, and as late as a 2002 speech to Republicans, stated, "I respect and will fully protect a woman's right to choose. That choice is a deeply personal one, and the women of our state should make it based on their beliefs, not mine and not the government's."

Now, Romney says, "I am pro-life. 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 pro-choice, I have respected the state's democratically held view. I have not attempted to impose my own views on the pro-choice majority."

It was the stem-cell debate that changed Romney's mind, he says. Political opponents have claimed he changed to curry favor with religious conservatives as he considers a run for the presidency in 2008.

Contraception: the ancient-future culture-war front?
Romney says that his beef is with abortion, not contraception. "If [the morning-after pill] only dealt with contraception, I wouldn't have a problem with it," he told The New York Times. "But it also in some cases terminates life after conception, and therefore it ceases to be a contraceptive pill. It becomes an abortion pill." (A Boston Heraldeditorial disagrees.)

But the Romney decision and explanation open the door to talking about contraception. After all, the morning after pill is essentially just a high dose of the same hormones in normal oral contraceptives ("the pill"). Whether normal oral contraceptives work as abortifacients (that is, whether they prevent implantation as well as preventing fertilization) has been a matter of some debate. But it's a debate that we may be about to see break open in the evangelical Protestant community.

First, we're seeing Protestant publishers talk more about the ethics of contraception. Baker published Jenell Williams Paris's Birth Control for Christians in 2003; now Zondervan recently released The Contraception Guidebook with the Christian Medical Associations. Neither took a hard line against the pill (The Contraception Guidebook, not surprisingly, echoes the CMA's statement on the subject), but the fact that evangelicals are even talking about possible post-fertilization effects of hormonal birth control is significant. (Christianity Today in 2001 published differing perspectives on birth control but takes no editorial position on the pill. The next issue of Christianity Today includes an article, "Why I Kissed the Pill Goodbye.")

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July (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49