Post by Moses on Jul 26, 2005 22:41:18 GMT -5
July 26, 2005
Massachusetts Veto Seeks to Curb Morning-After Pill
By PAM BELLUCK
BOSTON, July 25 - Confronting one of the most controversial issues to cross his desk, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts vetoed a bill on Monday that would expand access to the morning-after pill. The governor said he believed that the pill sometimes functioned as "an abortion pill," not just contraception.
Mr. Romney's decision will probably have little effect on the measure itself, which passed by veto-proof margins in both houses of the legislature. But it could affect how he is viewed by voters outside Massachusetts should he run for president in 2008, a course he is considering.
Indeed, national conservative groups, which play a critical role in races for the Republican presidential nomination, had been awaiting Mr. Romney's decision as a way to gauge whether the governor of this liberal state was conservative enough.
"I think what he does on this bill is probably a very good way to evaluate how serious he might be on the life issues," Connie Mackey, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, said earlier this month.
Supporters of the legislation accused the governor on Monday of vetoing it to appeal to conservative voters, furthering a presidential bid.
"It's totally disappointing that he would care less about women in Massachusetts than he does about his national ambitions," said Dianne Luby, president of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.
Ms. Luby pointed out that the Food and Drug Administration and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considered the pill a contraceptive, and said supporters saw it as a way to reduce abortions.
Mr. Romney's outlook on issues related to abortion have been under scrutiny recently, in part because of how they might play in a presidential contest and in part because of previous statements he has made on those issues. After months of staying fairly silent on the matter, he offered his views on abortion in an opinion article being published Tuesday in The Boston Globe. In that article, he spoke of a long evolution toward his current anti-abortion stance.
Critics say that his stance toward emergency contraception has also shifted. In 1994, during his failed effort to unseat Senator Edward M. Kennedy, he told The Boston Herald in response to a question: "I think it would be a positive thing to have women have the choice of taking the morning-after pill. I would favor having it available." And during his successful run for governor in 2002, he replied yes when asked on a Planned Parenthood questionnaire, "Do you support efforts to increase access to emergency contraception?"
On Monday, Mr. Romney said that his veto of the bill - which would allow some pharmacists to dispense the pill without a prescription and require hospitals to offer it to rape victims - was consistent with his past statements and that he continued to support contraception.
But, he said, in consulting with several doctors about the morning-after pill, he learned that it could not only prevent the formation of an embryo, as birth control pills do, but also prevent an embryo already formed from being implanted in the womb.
Mr. Romney said he believed that life began at conception.
"If it only dealt with contraception, I wouldn't have a problem with it," he said of the morning-after pill. "But it also in some cases terminates life after conception, and therefore it ceases to be a contraceptive pill. It becomes an abortion pill."
He said supporting the legislation would mean breaking a promise he made during the governor's race that while he personally opposed abortion, he would not change the state's abortion laws. At the time, that promise was widely interpreted as an effort to satisfy the majority of Massachusetts' constituents by pledging not to make abortion laws more restrictive. But Mr. Romney said Monday that he would also not change the laws to make them more permissive. He said that he did not object to requiring hospitals to offer the morning-after pill to rape victims but that he opposed the provision of the bill allowing some pharmacists to dispense it without a prescription; that element would allow women under the age of 18 to buy the pill without involving their parents.
In the past, Mr. Romney has said that he believes abortion should be "safe and legal" and that he supports the "substance" of Roe v. Wade. But lately he has suggested that his views have changed, and in the opinion article in The Globe he described them this way:
"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."
The governor wrote that his "convictions have evolved and deepened during my time as governor" as he considered issues like embryonic stem cell research and "observed as well, more clearly than I did as a private citizen, the bitterness and fierce anger that still lingers 32 years after Roe v. Wade."
His article may offer an indication of the approach he would take as a presidential candidate, seeking to strike a softer tone rather than criticizing abortion rights supporters.
"You can't be a pro-life governor in a pro-choice state without understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on both sides of the question," he wrote. "I also believe that, for all the conflicting views on this issue, it speaks well of our country that we at least 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."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company