Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has vetoed an emergency-contraception bill as a way of positioning himself for a run at the presidency. Knowing his veto was sure to be overridden, he came back from a vacation trip to veto it anyway, offering a symbolic sop to the right wing and also giving himself the opportunity for some high-profile grandstanding of his anti-choice credentials. I have argued previously that Romney painted himself into a right-wing corner by taking a low profile on abortion during his last campaign; he now appears to be trying to recover by taking aggressive positions against embryonic stem cell research (as governor of a state with one of the highest concentrations of major research universities!) and now emergency contraception. Naturally, women’s autonomy is the first thing to get jettisoned from Romney’s leaky electoral lifeboat.

Romney campaigned most recently as a mild anti-choicer who would not “change” abortion law in Massachusetts. In office, he began to come out as more openly and aggressively anti-choice. As the Boston Globe points out:

In a written response to a questionnaire for candidates in 2002, Romney told Planned Parenthood that he supported ”the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade,” according to the group. Today, Romney describes himself as a ”pro-life governor” who wishes ”the laws of our nation could reflect that view.” Calling the country ”divided over abortion,” he says states ”should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate.”

His attacks on stem cell research and emergency contraception mark him as an extreme right-winger. Romney, however, has been attempting to position these policies as a way of keeping his promise not to “change” abortion law, by defining almost anything that involves a fertilized egg cell as “abortion”. In an editorial today, Romeny said:

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

Signing such a measure into law would violate the promise I made to the citizens of Massachusetts when I ran for governor. I pledged that I would not change our abortion laws either to restrict abortion or to facilitate it. . . .

I have spoken with medical professionals to determine whether the drug contemplated under the bill would simply prevent conception or whether it would also terminate a living embryo after conception. Once it became clear that the latter was the case, my decision was straightforward. I will honor the commitment I made during my campaign: While I do not favor abortion, I will not change the state’s abortion laws.

Naturally he says not a word about the fact that virtually no one outside the extreme anti-choice community defines “pregnancy” as equivalent to “fertilization”. Unless emergency contraception terminates a pregnancy, it cannot be considered abortion – but Romney feels it is within the scope of the “promise” he made to block contraception by (in effect) defining any woman who has had sex as pregnant.

Romney’s editorial is a coded telegram to the right wing. It is replete with the tropes and cliches that serve as recognition signals among extreme anti-choicers. Romney apparently thinks he can bluff his way into the club after showing suspicious tolerance early in his term.

parental consent even for young teenagers . . . the seriousness of abortion but the importance of parental involvement . . . terminate a living embryo . . . while the nation remains so divided over abortion, I believe that the states, through the democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws . . . I have not attempted to impose my own views . . . it speaks well of our country that we recognize abortion as a problem. The law may call it a right, but no one ever called it a good . . . in the quiet of conscience people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America. . . . understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on both sides of the question. Many women considering abortions face terrible pressures, hurts, and fears; we should come to their aid with all the resourcefulness and empathy we can offer. At the same time, the starting point should be the innocence and vulnerability of the child waiting to be born. . . . the harsh logic of abortion can lead — to the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited. . . . the bitterness and fierce anger that still linger 32 years after Roe v. Wade. The majority in the US Supreme Court’s Casey opinion assured us this would pass away as Americans learned to live with abortion on demand. But this has proved a false hope. . . . those who wrote our Constitution would wonder why the federal courts had peremptorily removed the matter from the authority of the elected branches . . . matters of the starkest clarity like the issue of banning partial-birth abortions

Romney here attempts to claim the “reasonable center” by granting a few kind words to women “facing terrible pressures, hurts, and fears” while forcing them to continue unwanted pregnancies, but he is careful to hit the hot buttons of the right wing: the embryo fetish, “tragic choices”, “everyone knows abortion is bad”, “innocent child waiting to be born”, parental veto, “original intent”, and the “lingering bitterness of judicial activism” myth. (Strangely, he forgot the slavery analogy – I don’t think he’s really up to speed on this stuff yet.) It’s not clear how much of this he really believes – which will be his continuing problem with the right – but he’s striking the right poses at least. Along with it, he’s re-setting his priorities to a right-wing standard: women’s rights are – obviously – subject to the tyranny of local majorities; any fertilized egg takes moral precedence over any woman; the “innocence” of an embryo carries more moral weight than the actual interests of a woman; forced pregnancy is OK if you’re underage. And he has adopted the strange albiology of right-wing “science”: an embryo is a pregnancy (note he asked whether EC will “terminate a living embryo [sic]“, then concluded it is equivalent to abortion).

I don’t know what Romney will gain by such a transparent evasion of what is now clearly a disingenuous promise to voters, but it is clear what he is throwing away: his rationality, his commitment to truth and common sense, and his integrity.

Oh, right – and women’s freedom. But we expected that much.