Romney And Abortion

We all know former Governor Mitt Romney has flipped on abortion rights, but a comment he made during the August 5, 2007 televised debate in Iowa throws more, or perhaps less, light on his remarkable conversion.

The debate led off with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asking Kansas Senator Brownback about the "robo-call," which the campaign calls an "urgent action alert," in which a caller tells the prospective primary voter "as late as 2005, Mitt Romney pledged to support and uphold pro-abortion policies and passed taxpayer funding of abortions in Massachusetts. His wife Ann contributed money to Planned Parenthood. Mitt told the National Abortion Rights Action League that 'you need someone like me in Washington."

Calling the call "desperate and perhaps negative" (perhaps negative?), Romney stated "I changed my position. When I was governor and when I faced an issue of life or death, when the first time a bill came to my desk that related to the life of an unborn child, I came down on the side of life."

So far, so good. This is the Romney position on abortion as he has argued it, roughly "I was for abortion (rights) before I was against it." But later, Romney offered a curious response to Adam T. Waldron of Pocatello, Idaho, who asked "...what is a defining mistake of your life and why?" The former governor said "the greatest mistake was when I first ran for office being deeply opposed to abortion but saying I supported the current law, which was pro-choice and essentially a pro-choice position."

So now Mr. Romney is saying that he always (or at least before he was elected to anything) was pro-life. He did not ever change his mind, according to this formulation, but merely lied about his position. Which makes his previous (oft-repeated) statement that he changed his position... what- a lie?