A number of Massachusetts conservative leaders are warning pro-life and pro-family voters to pay close attention to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's decisions as governor on marriage, life, children, and family, saying that a number of conservatives are covering up a pro-abortion, pro-gay legacy to sustain his candidacy.
John Haskins, of the Parents' Rights Coalition, Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth, William Cotter, President of Operation Rescue-Boston and others are decrying what they call a cover-up by the "conservative establishment" of Romney's gubernatorial record that shows he is not the convert to the pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage bandwagon as he has claimed to be.
"Behind the empty gestures and deceptive rhetoric, Romney was not pro-life or a defender of marriage by any stretch of the imagination. He was a disaster," said John O'Gorman, a member of the board of directors of Massachusetts Citizens For Life (MCFL)
The Massachusetts conservative activists point out that Romney approved taxpayer funded abortions under the state health care plan he signed in 2006. "Commonwealth Care" requires a $50 co-pay for abortion and prominently included Planned Parenthood on its advisory board. The move deeply disturbed pro-life leaders in Massachusetts, who were looking for a different Romney, who had publicized his purported pro-life conversion in July 2005 op-ed in the Boston Globe.
O'Gorman said that Romney had been touting a pro-life award from MCFL as some kind of proof of his conversion, when in truth he received a political leadership award, the Mullins Award for Political Leadership from the Pioneer Valley Chapter, "not a pro-life award and not approved by MCFL's state board of directors."
Haskins added that Romney received the award after paying $15,000 to MCFL, before gaining the award through the local chapter, instead of MCFL's state headquarters.
"MCFL was in financial difficulty when Romney's check came in and has been reluctant to contradict him publicly," Haskins said. "There are some very fine people associated with MCFL, but to let Romney hustle voters with this conveniently cooked-up pro-life award is a tragic mistake."
"If Mitt Romney outruns his record in Massachusetts and buys his way into the White House it will be partly because people who know the facts did not expose this pro-life award as not much more than a dime-store rip-off," Haskins added.
Ray Neary of ProLife Massachusetts said Romney should not be called pro-life for simply embracing what is known as an "anti-Roe" or "federalist" position that would allow states to decide their own abortion laws.
"We who have been in the trenches since 1973 know Mitt Romney has not switched to a pro-life stance, as he claims. He has merely switched to a 'states' rights' pro-abortion position – attaching a 'pro-life' label to it," Neary said. "Just overturning Roe v Wade would not legally prevent a single unborn child from being destroyed – but only change the locale."
The activists also said voters should know Romney's support for homosexual indoctrination of public schoolchildren and refusal to order education officials to respect the rights of parents to prevent their children from being subjected to this indoctrination. They also point out that Massachusetts judges had no legal authority to mandate "gay marriage" and Romney used "that deception to force officials to issue marriage licenses illegally modified without the legislature's approval and perform the ceremonies."
"A clean-cut family man who after six decades in Mormonism was still strongly pro-abortion and pro-homosexual unions, pushed gay adoption, actively funded pro-homosexuality indoctrination in schools over parents' objections and was far sloppier than any Democrat with constitutions…Now there's a politician the establishment can trust," said Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth.
The Politico's Daniel Allott has observed that the apparent inconsistencies between Mitt Romney's rhetoric and his record on social conservative issues, not Mormonism, is the chief reason why Romney is struggling to convince religious conservatives to vote for him. Allott observes that Romney has "a mixed and rather paltry record on life" and has issued misleading statements like "I came down on the side of life [in] every single instance as governor of Massachusetts" that cannot be reconciled with approving taxpayer funded abortion in 2006, abandoning plans to defend Catholic and private hospitals from being forced to dispense emergency contraception and appointing a notoriously pro-abortion judge.
"In his speech on the role of religion in public life, Romney may have won some admirers by portraying himself as a man of authentic faith," Allott wrote. "Religious conservatives wish Romney would show just as much authenticity when discussing his record on the protection of nascent human life."
To Read the Politico's "Romney, get real about your abortion record" by Daniel Allott: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7482.html
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