You know how when you've given notice at a job and you have the next thing lined up, you completely stop caring about the quality of your work, then tenor of your office relationships, and even the maintenance of meaningless, low-level flirtations? Apparently, that's where Governor Romney is right now, having successfully converted Massachusetts into the staging ground for his presidential campaign. Yesterday, as promised, he returned dramatically from his (conveniently close-by) vacation in (early-primary state) New Hampshire to veto a bill that was approved by both houses of the legislature with a veto-proof majority. Romney apparently feels so strongly about the dangers of the morning-after pill that even the restful leisure of his home on the shores of Lake Winipesaukee could not keep him from this important, meaningless veto. While this proves Bostonist wrong in our theory that the Governor's weirdest policy moves come when he is out of state, it makes things better and better for our imagined, stern-voiced campaign commercials: "He cut his vacation short to take a stand against easy access to abortion pills." (Never mind the fact that he said in 2002 that he was in favor of easier access to emergency contraception, nor the fact that there is nothing more presidential, in this day and age, than taking time off.)
And lest you (or Bostonist, since we are naive like that) get the impression that this was some sort of semi-private, personal decision, taken by the guv out of duty to his own conception of right and wrong, Romney had the good graces to clarify his motives in a Globe opinion piece. We think this piece works best if read aloud while imagining a montage of patriotic pictures of Mitt:
You can't be a prolife governor in a prochoice state without 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.In some respects, these convictions have evolved and deepened during my time as governor. In considering the issue of embryo cloning and embryo farming, I saw where 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.
We can't decide whether this would work better with emotional-but-energetic, Chariots-of-Fire type music in the background, or with something more martial and decidedly American (think John Philip Sousa). Luckily, the governor probably knows a few people who are good at putting together this sort of thing.
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