RedOrbit NEWS | Romney Stand Called Pragmatic

Jul. 27--Governor Mitt Romney's call for individual states and not the US Supreme Court to determine the legality of abortion places him squarely in the center of the antiabortion camp, which acknowledges that the public isn't ready for an outright ban in the US Constitution.

After avoiding questions about his position for weeks, Romney on Monday outlined an emphatically anti-abortion position. He criticized the landmark 1973 Roe V. Wade decision that legalized abortion and declared that states should be allowed to set policy on abortion.

"It seems to me that Romney's position, that these decisions should be made by state legislatures, would appeal to most prolife voters and most pragmatic prolife activists," said David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington. "Even though I think the reality is that returning it to the states would not actually get the prolifers very much of what they want."

Social conservatives have long called for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, but, given the public opposition to that approach, some abortion opponents have set a shorter-term goal of returning the issue to state legislatures.

Allowing states to set their own abortion laws would almost certainly lead to severe restrictions or an absolute prohibition in some states, although there are widely divergent views on how many states would do so, several legal scholars and activists said yesterday.

Activists and legal scholars on both sides of the abortion issue say the language Romney used in an opinion article published yesterday in the Globe will resonate with social conservatives who would be a key constituency for Romney if he decides to run for the GOP nomination for president in 2008.

"The people long seasoned in the movement will find very refined points where they'd want to either quibble with him or offer instruction to him as a newfound friend," said Hadley Arkes, professor of political science at Amherst College and a prominent opponent of abortion.

"But I think people would see here the clear signs of somebody who wants to say he shares their perspective and wants to move in their direction," Arkes added.

When Romney ran for governor in 2002, he said that he supported the "substance" of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. He also promised not to change the state's abortion laws. But Romney completed his shift to a firmly antiabortion position in the op-ed article, saying his feelings have "evolved and deepened during my time as governor."

"I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother," he wrote. "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."

Romney's vision can be realized only if the US Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade. Such a ruling would not outlaw abortion, but it would eliminate the federal guarantee that has prevented states from making it illegal.

Under that scenario, the nation would return to a legal climate in place before the Roe ruling. At that time, legal abortions were available in 17 states, under a range of circumstances beyond those necessary to save a woman's life.

There are widely divergent opinions on how many states would outlaw abortion if the issue is thrown back to them; estimates range from a half-dozen to as many as 38.

Boaz of the Cato Institute predicted that a reversal of Roe v. Wade would energize abortion rights supporters and that "as a political matter, there wouldn't be more than a dozen states and probably half that many that would outlaw abortions."

But NARAL Pro-Choice America points out that 19 states have governors and controlling majorities in their legislatures that oppose abortion, and the group argues that 19 more states are tilting in an antiabortion direction.

Melissa Kogut, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, said, "It would be a disaster to go back to a world where individual states are deciding."

"It would be an accident of geography whether a woman will have access to the full range of reproductive health services," Kogut said. "For women who have the means to travel, it will be a minor barrier, but for women who don't have the resources to travel, the lack of access in their home states would be devastating. A civil right of this magnitude and importance, the right to privacy, should be protected at the Supreme Court level."

Analyzing data from the early 1970s, when abortion was legal in some states, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, based in New York City, found that poor and minority women had a more difficult time obtaining a legal abortion and that the need to travel long distances often caused a delay in having the procedure performed, which raises the risk of complications for the woman.

Karlyn Bowman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who studies public opinion, said it's impossible to predict how many states would outlaw abortion today, because polls consistently show that people's views on abortion are muddled.

"Most people, two-thirds, don't want to see Roe repealed, but they are still willing to put significant restrictions on its use on the federal level," Bowman said. "A lot of people believe it's murder and that it should be a personal choice."

Given that uncertainty, abortion opponents know it's too soon to expect two-thirds of the Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures to approve an amendment to the US Constitution banning abortion. Romney acknowledged as much in his article.

A 1996 manifesto signed by 45 conservative legal scholars and the leaders of the major antiabortion organizations proclaimed that "the right to life of the unborn will not be secured until it is secured under the Constitution of the United States."

But the manifesto, called "The America We Seek: A Statement of Pro-Life Principle and Concern," called for a gradual approach similar to the one that Romney advocated in his article this week.

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