Pro-Abortion Blog Attempts to Smear Romney with Inaccurate Ties to Stericycle

Excerpted from LifeNews.com:

At a time when the pro-life movement is coming together to support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over pro-abortion President Barack Obama, left-wing blogs are working overtime to sew seeds of doubt and distrust about the man who converted to the pro-life position on abortion.

Although one of the founders of the modern-day pro-life movement vouches for the authenticity of Romney’s pro-life conversion, left-wing blog Mother Jones hopes to make Romney look duplicitous on abortion by tying him to a company, Stericycle, that has come under fire from pro-life advocates for disposing of medical waste (read: the bodies of unborn children) from abortion clinics.

Mother Jones…..hopes to confuse pro-life advocates who are supporting Romney into thinking that somehow he was the owner and operator of Stericycle and somehow approved of its business disposing the bodies of victims of abortion.

The pro-abortion blog notes that Romney had been part of a 1999 investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm and makes the wild-eyed claim that the information has “the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.”

Bain contends “Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal” but Mother Jones claims to have found documents showing Romney was involved in the investment. Bain says Romney left well before the November 1999 deal while the pro-abortion blog contends “SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999.”

Bain explained further, “Mitt Romney retired from Bain Capital in February 1999. He has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies since that time.”

As Mother Jones notes: “In 2001, the Bain-Madison Dearborn partnership that had invested in the company sold 40 percent of its holdings in Stericycle for about $88 million—marking a hefty profit on its original investment of $75 million. The Bain-related group sold the rest of its holdings by 2004. It was not until six years later that anti-abortion activists would target Stericycle for collecting medical waste at abortion clinics.”

That Romney wasn’t involved in, approving of, familiar with, or even involved in the company at the time of the Stericycle-aborted bodies disposal business, is further proven by the documentation of the pro-life Stop Stericycle campaign. The campaign began in January 2011 — over a decade after Romney was no longer involved in Bain Capital.

At minimum, even if Romney had been involved in Stericycle past 1999/2002, the date by which he clearly was no longer involved, pro-life efforts to raise awareness of its business with abortion facilities didn’t began until 18 months ago. Most pro-life Americans still are unaware of the connection but the information certainly didn’t filter down to the grassroots pro-life community until last year at the earliest. Moreover, though the first press release announcing the effort went out in Janaury 2011, the Stop Stericycle web site, which chronicles the press releases the campaign has sent since then, shows no significant activity in blowing the lid off of the company until the middle-latter part of last year.

On its documentation page, the Stop Stericycle campaign lists documents showing contracts and other information linking the business with abortion clinics. The first document offered as proof comes from 2003 — anywhere from one to four years after Romney had left Bain Capital and coming at the time Bain itself had divested from Stericycle.

Most of the documents cover the period between 2007-2009, making it appear Stericycle launched a concerted effort during those years to drum up business from abortion companies. Again, that time period is well after Romney was no longer involved in the company or Bain Capital, which had sold off its Stericycle holdings three-four years prior.

While the pro-abortion, pro-Obama side of the political divide would love to sew seeds of doubt with pro-life voters and it attempted to secure another four years for the abortion president, pro-life voters can rest assured that their attempts are misleading and disingenuous.

Steven Ertelt