Alan K. Simpson Quotes
I consider abortion to be a deeply personal and intimate issue for women and I don't believe male legislators should even vote on the issue.
Simpson, Alan K. Quoted in The New York Times, 20 Apr. 1989.
Italian women have been relatively inactive in political affairs. It took issues like abortion and contraception to galvanize Italian women into political activism. 50,000 women marched in this demonstration. Even though Italy is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and the Vatican is a major opponent of birth control and abortion, both soon become legal in Catholic Italy despite the opposition of the Vatican.
This quotation is one of the best examples of political flip flopping and expedience. The quotation taken by itself is not unusual and is the same position as political candidates in Massachusetts have taken for years regardless of political party. Romney was then running for the Senate—a race that he lost. Later he ran for Governor on the same position and won. However in 2008, he decided to run for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. However, at that time, the Christian Religious Right had sufficient clout within the Republican party that no one with Romney’s position on abortion would be likely to win the nomination. So Romney reversed his position on abortion and when accused of flip-flopping for political expediency, claimed that he had had an epiphany regarding abortion. However as this quotation shows, he had always believed that the personal abortion views of candidates should NOT be brought into the campaign. However along with his epiphany on abortion itself, he conveniently now claimed every candidate should constantly declare in his campaigning his position on abortion. He also flip flopped on many other issues including repudiating the Obama Health Care reform which was modeled after the very successful program he had supported when Governor. He changed on so many issues that even the Christian Right Wing Fundamentalists, whose political positions he espoused did not always trust him, nor did most of the moderates and liberals whose views he used to claim when it was politically advantageous to do so.
Romney had a reputation for changing his political position and trying to straddle positions. After losing this race, Romney improved as a candidate and did not try and straddle as much. He won the governorship in the next election.
Other society benefits that proponents of legal abortion as the constitution provides have enumerated include reducing the number of unwanted children, reducing the number of children in poverty and the health and other costs that accompany them, reducing the financial burdens of couples who cannot afford a child at the time, preventing high school and college dropouts, reducing the health costs of women who have botched illegal abortions.
Alan Kooi Simpson is an American politician and member of the Republican Party, who represented Wyoming in the United States Senate (1979–97). He also served as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Democratic Party co-chair Erskine Bowles of North Carolina.
