Pro-Life or Pro-Me?

Steve Chapman has an excellent column today about politicians conveniently changing positions on abortion when it fits their needs. He focuses first on Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who was strongly pro-choice as recently as 1994, when he ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy. His position on life issues, and actions as governor, became more conservative just about the time he began attempting to court conservative GOP primary voters. Coincidence? You decide. Romney is in good company:

It's a little unfair to single out the Massachusetts governor, since he is not the first presidential candidate to outgrow a youthful set of abortion beliefs. Ronald Reagan signed a liberal abortion law in California before reversing himself. George H.W. Bush, once a supporter of abortion rights, took the opposite position as Reagan's running mate in 1980. The current president had a liberal position when he ran for Congress in 1978.

But Democrats have proven equally open-minded. Jesse Jackson, who once denounced legal abortion as "a policy of killing infants," morphed when he ran for president in 1984. Al Gore, who once voted for a measure stipulating that life begins at conception, made an about-face before becoming Bill Clinton's running mate in 1992. As governor of Arkansas, Clinton said, "I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortion." As president, not so much.

You will notice the common element: Each of these shifts, however morally sincere, perfectly fit the political needs of the candidate in question at that point in his career.

Does that make you feel you can't trust politicians on this subject? It shouldn't. The record shows clearly that you can trust almost any politician to champion the abortion policy that serves his or her immediate interests, and to sincerely place his own political prospects above anything else.