I agree with Kate that it’s important to welcome converts to the pro-life cause, and I’m not going to doubt Romney for what he says he believes now. His explanation makes some sense philosophically – that he would come to the realization of the more obviously horrific problem (fetal abortion) after seeing the same disrespect for human life applied casually at the embryonic stage, where the public is actualy more willing to accept it now.
Yet the comparison with Bernard Nathanson is too much for me, if only because Nathanson was not running for office when he had his change of heart. Nor had he embraced abortion during an earlier run for office. Nathanson was a zealous abortionist whose change of heart could not have come any way but genuinely. He had no other motive to do it — he had to renounce and denounce an entire lucrative career of directly killing babies in the womb.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand — well, he’s a politician. It’s no wonder that people have doubts.