Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee expressed skepticism Tuesday over rival Mitt Romney’s assertion that prior to 2004, he “hadn’t given a lot of thought to when life began.”
“I’m not going to say whether I believe it or not,” Huckabee told The Examiner. “I would find it very difficult to think that any person who’s been in elected politics on either the Democratic or Republican side had not sat down and thought through that issue very, very carefully, because it’s one that is a defining issue for so many of us, particularly in the Republican Party — more so perhaps than the Democratic Party.”
Unlike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor who has always been anti-abortion, Romney changed his position on abortion from favoring abortion rights to anti-abortion after grappling with a stem cell research bill when he was governor of Massachusetts.
“I hadn’t given a lot of thought to when life began — I have to be honest with you — until this whole stem cell research matter came to the fore in our state and this bill came to my desk,” Romney told an audience of conservatives in Washington on Jan. 27.
Yet Romney, 59, had addressed the issue of abortion in political campaigns dating back to 1996, when he tried to unseat Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and in 2002, when he ran for governor.
Romney’s spokesman said Tuesday that the issue did not truly hit home until 2004.
“Governor Romney was never a career politician,” explained Kevin Madden, spokesman for Romney’s presidential exploratory committee. “His life before politics was spent building a business and raising a family. But, Governor Romney, when confronted with this issue as governor, has always sided with life and the protection of life.”
