Mitt Romney takes a position on tax policy, then his staff says something else. Romney takes a position on Iran, then his staff says something else. Romney takes a position on health care, then his staff says something else. Romney takes a position on his own immigration adviser, then his staff says something else.
This new one, however, is a doozy, even by Romney standards.
Mitt Romney today said no abortion legislation is part of his agenda, but he would prohibit federally-funded international nonprofits from providing abortions in other countries.
"There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda," the GOP presidential candidate told The Des Moines Register's editorial board during a meeting today before his campaign rally at a Van Meter farm.
It took all of two hours before Romney's chief spokesperson said the exact opposite, explaining, "Gov. Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life." Asked whether the candidate's position on abortion legislation had changed, Romney's spokesperson would "not answer directly."
Look, even before the predictable walkback, Romney's carefully-worded answer, intended to make him appear less extreme on reproductive rights, was absurd. Romney's platform calls for a constitutional amendment that bans all abortions; Romney said he "absolutely" supports a "Personhood" measure that would ban all abortions and some forms of birth control; and in 2007, Romney boasted that that he'd be "delighted" to sign a bill that would no longer allow abortions "at all, period."
For that matter, Romney intends to fill the federal judiciary with far-right judges who would agree with him on reproductive rights; he would use an executive order to reinstate the Mexico City policy; and he intends to "get rid of" Planned Parenthood by ending the federal aid it's enjoyed with bipartisan support for decades.
As for "legislation," Romney said yesterday that he doesn't see anti-abortion bills as part of his agenda, but if he were in the Oval Office, he'd certainly sign these bills if they were passed by his far-right allies in Congress.
But even putting all of that aside, what are we to make of a candidate who keeps trying to appear mainstream, only to have his aides change the story a couple of hours later?
"It's troubling that Mitt Romney is so willing to play politics with such important issues," Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement. "But we know the truth about where he stands on a woman's right to choose – he's said he'd be delighted to sign a bill banning all abortions, and called Roe v. Wade 'one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history' while pledging to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn it. Women simply can't trust him."
For those keeping score at home, it now appears that Romney has taken nine different positions on abortion rights over the course of 18 years.
Update: Last year, Romney wrote a piece for the conservative National Review, detailing his "pro-life pledge." Among other things, he vowed to "advocate for and support" anti-abortion legislation.
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RomneyRyan are not qualified to be dog catchers, let alone Presedent/VP. They are showing that more and more everyday
There is a sceen from the movie Best Little Whorehouse in Texas where the governor sings how he likes to dance around the people when the press tries to pen him down. This is Governor Romney and that sceen should be shown in news clips.
The Romney/Ryan ticket would be disastrous for women's reproductive health. 99% of all women will have sex in their lives and will use some form of birth control. Take a look at this quote from an article from the Infozine website, concerning access to free birth control under the Affordable Care Act in a test study in St. Louis, Missouri. Quote starts here:
"Providing birth control to women at no cost substantially reduced unplanned pregnancies and cut abortion rates by 62 percent to 78 percent over the national rate, a new study shows. St Louis, MO - infoZine - Newswise - Among a range of birth control methods offered in the study, most women chose long-acting methods like intrauterine devices (IUDs) or implants, which have lower failure rates than commonly used birth control pills. In the United States, IUDs and implants have high up-front costs that sometimes aren't covered by health insurance, making these methods unaffordable for many women.
“The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies,” says lead author Jeff Peipert, MD, PhD, the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “We think improving access to birth control, particularly IUDs and implants, coupled with education on the most effective methods has the potential to significantly decrease the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in this country.”
Unintended pregnancies are a major problem in the United States. Each year, about 50 percent of all U.S. pregnancies are unplanned, far higher than in other developed countries. About half of these pregnancies result from women not using contraception and half from incorrect or irregular use."
Quote stops here with website sourced below:
http: //www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/53347/
I support all American women and teenage girls getting access to free birth control, family planning, and reproductive health care services paid for by insurance companies or by programs paid for with public funds. Women pay into insurance plans and pay taxes all of their working lives. Women are our mothers, girlfriends, wives, daughters, coworkers, and sometimes bosses. Many women serve in the military as enlisted personnel and officers. Women also disproportionately carry the heaviest burden of raising children and caring for elderly parents. If you respect the women who share your life as a man, you have to support President Obama's Affordable Care Act, groups like Planned Parenthood, and programs like Medicaid because it helps pay for elderly parents in nursing homes. What is good for women's health and their families is good for America and smart cost effective public policy. Vote Obama/Biden 2012 and a straight Democratic ticket because women deserve to be treated like human beings not like GOP doormats.
there is no such thing as "free" birth control...someone is having to pay for it, the question is ... who?
just saying...
I guess the war on Big Bird idea isn't working....so I guess back to war on women.....anything to avoid talking about the Benghazi cover up. It is a shame that we had people begging for help and it was denied.....I think we deserve to know why.
All you have to do is ask:
The top Democrat on the House Oversight panel on Wednesday called for Republicans to join him in restoring funds after deep cuts to embassy security by the GOP-led House over the past two years.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) made the request in his opening statement at a hearing on security deficiencies that could have helped to prevent the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Democrats are hoping to turn the tables on Republicans by pointing out that they have slashed funding for those sorts of efforts.
“The chairman has said that our committee will examine not only the Libya attack, but security at our posts across the Middle East. Mr. Chairman, I fully support this effort,” Cummings said, according to his prepared remarks. “And if this is our goal, we have to examine the funding.
“The fact is that, since 2011, the House has cut embassy security by hundreds of millions of dollars below the amounts requested by the President. The Senate restored some of these funds, but the final amounts were still far below the Administration’s requests. And they were far below the levels we enacted in 2010.”
According to a Democratic staff memo obtained by The Hill, the House cut the two State Department accounts for “Worldwide Security Protection” and “Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance” by a total of $459 million in 2011 and 2012 below the Obama administration's funding request. The Democrat-controlled Senate was able to reinstate $88.25 million — still $370.7 million lower than what the administration wanted.
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/terrorism/261243-cummings-defies-issa-to-restore-cuts-to-embassy-security-as-both-parties-spar-over-libya
So now their going to blame it on budget cuts........Why didn't they say that from the get go?.....I guess they needed some time to come up with an excuse.
Romney wants to assign many decisions to the States. What this tells me is that Romney wants the Voters to be subject to the whims of the largest Corporate Contributor(his proprietors) to the economy of that particular State, rather than the Federal Government(his enemy)! A dangerous and complicated option for the average Voter!