Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Supporting Planned Parenthood

Attended Planned Parenthood Fundraiser

from left: Ann Romney (in white jacket), Mitt Romney, Nicky Nichols Gamble (with her back to the camera)

On June 12, 1994, Mitt Romney attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser held in in Cohasset, Massachusetts. At the time he was running against Sen. Ted Kennedy for the Massachusetts Senate seat.

1994 Financial Support

In May 2007, Romney's campaign acknowledged that his wife, Ann Romney made a $150 contribution to Planned Parenthood in June 1994.

However Nicky Nichols Gamble, the Planned Parenthood official who accepted the $150 cheque, stated that it was from the Romneys as a couple.. She further said that she had no reason to believe at the time that Romney was "not 100 percent behind the pro-choice public policy position."

2002 Support for Status Quo on Abortion

Planned Parenthood questionnaire - click to expand

In 2002, Mitt Romney responded to the Massachusetts Planned Parenthood candidate endorsement questionnaire. He answered "yes" to the following questions:

• Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade?
• Do you support state funding of abortion services through Medicaid for low-income women?
• Do you support efforts to increase access to emergency contraception?

Appointed Planned Parenthood Rep. to MassHealth Board

Chapter 58, Section 16M. (a) of the bill passing Commonwealth Care into law provided for the establishment of a MassHealth payment policy advisory board. The board was to consist of a number of different representatives, including a member appointed by the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

Romney Agency Approved $5m Loan to Planned Parenthood

Former governor Mitt Romney's economic development agency granted initial approval to a tax-exempt bond last year for a Planned Parenthood clinic in Worcester that will provide abortions, just two months before he left office and began highlighting his anti-abortion position as a presidential candidate. Asked about the $5 million financial deal yesterday, the Romney campaign said the former governor was not aware it was under consideration when Planned Parenthood won preliminary approval in November 2006. In the case of the abortion clinic funding deal, the Republican candidate's spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said Romney would have attempted to block it - if he had known about it. "Mitt Romney is prolife," Fehrnstrom said. "He did not know about this loan. It was made by an agency that does not report to the governor. If it did, he would have told them not to do it." In additon to providing abortion services, the 10,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood clinic planned for Worcester will offer Plan B emergency contraception, also known as the "morning after pill," which also is opposed by antiabortion advocates.

Jeffrey M. Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University, said he was surprised that Romney and his aides did not catch such a politically sensitive financial deal making its way through his economic development agency. Now, Berry said, the campaign will be put in the position of defending Romney at a time when he is heading into the most critical days of his candidacy.

Told Catholic Hospitals to Administer Abortion Pills

In 2003, the Massachusetts legislature considered an "emergency contraception" mandate. It would have allowed pharmacists to sell Plan B - an abortifacient - without a prescription and without parental consent. It also would have required all hospitals to inform rape victims of the availability of such "emergency contraceptives" and provide them to the rape victim if she wanted them even when they would cause an abortion.

This law was in direct conflict with a law passed in Massachusetts in 1975 declared, "No privately controlled hospital .. shall be required to permit any patient to have an abortion ... or to furnish contraceptive devices or information to such patient ... when said services or referrals are contrary to the religious or moral principles of said hospital..."

On July 26, 2005 Governor Romney published an op-ed in the Boston Globe, acknowledging that Plan B could act as an abortifacient:

"The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception. The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception."

However on December 7, 2005, Governor Romney held a press conference where he said that his legal counsel had advised him the new emergency contraception law trumped the 1975 conscience law:

"On that basis, I have instructed the Department of Public Health to follow the conclusion of my own legal counsel and to adopt that sounder view. In my personal view, it's the right thing for hospitals to provide information and access to emergency contraception to anyone who is a victim of rape."

Commonwealth Care covers Abortion

Romney's health care legislation, Commonwealth Care (sometimes refered to as RomneyCare) provides taxpayer-funded abortions for a co-pay of $50.

Praising the healthcare plan at a May 3, 2007, Republican debate in Simi Valley, California, Romney stated,

"I love it. It's a fabulous program. Now I know there's some people who wonder about it. Sen. Kennedy at the signing of the bill, we were all there together, he said, 'You know, if you've got Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy agreeing to the same bill, that means one thing -- one of us didn't read it.' But I helped write it. And I knew it well."

Soros: Obama, Romney 'Not Much Difference'

In an interview in late Jan. 2012 in Davos, Switzerland, Billionaire financier George Soros stated that if Mitt Romney was to win the presidency in 2012, that there would be "little difference" between him and Barack Obama in the White House.

"Well, look, either you’ll have an extremist conservative, be it Gingrich or Santorum, in which case I think it will make a big difference which of the two comes in. If it’s between Obama and Romney, there isn’t all that much difference except for the crowd that they bring with them. Romney would have to take Gingrich or Santorum as a vice president and you probably have some pretty extreme candidates for the Supreme Court. So it won't be that great a difference [if Romney becomes president]."