Monday, August 08, 2011

How shallow and malleable is Mitt Romney?

Pretty damned shallow and malleable.

In a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney revealed a startling chapter from his past: A close relative had died many years earlier in a botched illegal abortion, shaping Romney's stance in favor of safe and legal access to abortion for all women. But in the many years since that revelation, even as Romney flipped his position and became an ardent opponent of legal abortion, the details of his young relative's story, including even her name, have never been reported.

The relative he was referring to back in '94, Salon has learned, was a Detroit woman named Ann Keenan. She was the sister of Romney's brother-in-law and died at the age of 21 in 1963, a full decade before Roe v. Wade. While much of what happened remains murky, an investigation by Salon has uncovered never-reported details about her life and death, including: how she died (an infection); that her grief-stricken parents asked for memorial donations to be made to Planned Parenthood; and that the family apparently wanted to keep the death quiet because Romney's politically ambitious father, George, was then governor of Michigan.


But if they memory of a dead relative can be tossed into the ol' varmint patch or dog-cage, well Mitt's more than willing to pay the price.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My grandmother died of the "infection" in 1926, leaving three daughters and one son without a mom. No one in the family talked about her dying of anything but a fever when we were growing up. The abortion part was just ignored in telling her grandchildren. My mother finally told us the truth after she was past seventy and we were well into middle age. There were just things she meant to tell us "later." Defending about legalizing abortion with other Catholics was met with, she killed her baby so she deserved to die.
Another reason Christianity needs serious revision. vox

Montag said...

Umm, "malleable" is too kind.

How about "unprincipled hack?"

pansypoo said...

hey, mittens didn't put her on the roof of the car!

he's rather conform than be a moderate democrat.
or a moderate republican.