'Complicated' statements from Romney, Giuliani on abortion rights are 'welcome,' opinion piece says

Although it is "easy to hoot with derision" at the "awfully complicated positions" on abortion rights taken by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), the two possible Republican presidential candidates "make sense" when listened to "with a decent sympathy," Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, writes in a New York Times opinion piece (Althouse, New York Times, 2/24).

Giuliani, who supports abortion rights, in recent talks with conservative media outlets and voters in South Carolina said he would appoint "strict constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court.

He in a recent interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News also said that a law (S 3) being reviewed by the Supreme Court that bans so-called "partial-birth abortion" should be upheld and that he supports parental notification requirements for minors seeking abortion with a judicial bypass provision.

Since Romney first ran for U.S. Senate in 1994, he has acknowledged that his position on abortion has changed from "proudly" supporting abortion rights to saying that he would "like to see" Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that effectively barred state abortion bans, overturned.

Romney in 2004 said that when he studied human embryonic stem cell research, he experienced an "awakening that led him to the conclusion that 'the sanctity of life had been cheapened' by the Roe decision" (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 2/13).

Romney while governor "took an admirably limited view of executive power and acknowledged the independence of the legal system," and Giuliani "respects the distinctive work of judges and the separate role of the state legislatures," according to Althouse.

"To represent what the country as a whole thinks, the president ought to take account of the deep beliefs Americans have about both reproductive freedom and the value of unborn life," Althouse writes.

She concludes that people should have "patience" in what Romney and Giuliani are saying but should not be "naive" because the next president will appoint judges who will bring "a version of humanity that will express something of the president's cast of mind" (New York Times, 2/24).