Pro-Lifers Refuse to be misled about Pro-Life Mitt Romney

By Dave Andrusko, National Right to Life

There is a built-in problem with rebutting in detail even the most blatantly spurious/misleading/false accusations lodged against pro-life former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney: inevitably you give additional oxygen to a fire that will eventually extinguish itself.

We are single-issue pro-lifers, so we wouldn’t address the Obama attacks on other aspects of Mr. Romney’s experience, for example, his role at Bain Capital. Suffice it say, as we noted yesterday in citing non-partisan sources, after spending gobs of money, this slam by the Obama campaign is having no effect.

Likewise, the hit job executed by the Washington Post on Mr. Romney when he was a teenager! It was so one-sided and so ludicrously overblown, the attempt to undercut Mr. Romney boomeranged on the Post.

But how about our issues? What we need to remember is that there have been, are, and will continue to be cynical attempts to separate the pro-life community from Mr. Romney. And by cynical I mean in bad faith, allegations that have no basis in fact. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the Obama re-election team is to subtlety (let alone truth) what Planned Parenthood is to motherhood: never the twain shall meet.

They can’t help themselves. Obama’s team assumes we are all idiots and that the press (which IS, by and large VERY favorably disposed to the President) won’t take five minutes to check to see whether there is any validity to Obama’s latest made-up-out-of-whole cloth assertion.

The problem for Obama is that his distortions—and those by his allies in the blogosphere—are so transparently untrue, so obviously layered in misrepresentation, that it takes less than five minutes to disprove them.

In case anyone missed this the first time around, I have included the text of Gov. Romney’s video to the 2012 National Right to Life Convention. His words say a great deal about who he is and how he came to be a strong pro-lifer.

Good Morning! I appreciate the invitation to speak with you today. I’m sorry I am not able to join you in person. I’d like to begin by thanking Carol Tobias and Darla St. Martin for their important work. Carol and Darla are two of a long line of leaders who have helped this organization grow from a small committee to a large community that has a welcome presence in all 50 states. I’m honored and grateful to have the endorsement of National Right to Life. If you ever question whether your advocacy changes hearts and minds, let me assure you that it does.

I’m just one of many Americans from every walk of life who found themselves asking an important question and after thoughtful deliberation and came to a heartfelt conclusion: Innocent life must be respected and protected from its beginning to its natural end. When I first ran for office, I said that I would retain the laws relating to abortion that were already in place despite my personal belief that abortion is wrong. But after being elected Governor of Massachusetts, I was confronted with legislation that called on me to expand the legal taking of unborn life, treating human embryos as mere research material to be experimented upon and then destroyed. I could not support that. Government sanction of abortion devalues human life.

As a governor then, whenever the question of life came before me, I answered that we must protect it. I fought to ban human cloning. I fought to ban embryo farming. I fought to define life as beginning at conception. I fought for abstinence education in our schools. And I vetoed a bill that would have given young girls abortion-inducing pills without prescription or parental consent. I fought those fights because in the quiet of conscience I knew it was the right thing to do. And I will always be grateful for advocates like you who stand to protect human life.

Today I’m running for a different and higher office. It comes with an even greater set of responsibilities and even tougher challenges than I faced as governor. More than 23 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have left the workforce altogether. New business startups are at a thirty year low. Our nation is running trillion dollar deficits every year. Food and energy costs have soared while home values and incomes have plummeted. President Obama’s economic policies have failed. He’s had his chance. Now it’s time for a change in leadership.

If I’m fortunate enough to be elected this November, putting America back on the right track and getting Americans back to work will be my priority from day one. But I will not forget that a strong country needs more than a strong economy. It needs strong families and strong values as well. President Obama once said that decisions about abortion are “above his pay grade.” I’ll never be so cavalier about life. I will be a pro-life president.

I’ll reinstate the Mexico City Policy. I’ll cut off funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which supports China’s abhorrent One Child Policy. I’ll ensure that abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood get no taxpayer dollars. And I’ll reverse Obama regulations that attack our religious freedom and threaten innocent life. I’ll nominate judges who respect the Constitution, are proponents of judicial restraint and know the difference between personal opinion and the law.

If elected President I will work with you to foster respect for innocent human life with an understanding that a culture that fails to do so ultimately becomes a culture in which respect for all fellow human beings is diminished. I’m heartened by the advances made by the pro-life movement over the last several years. The ranks of our pro-life partners are growing every day. That progress would not be possible without your passion and your dedication. God bless you for it and God bless the United States of America. Thank you so much.