I got your point. You believe Reagan changed his position on abortion. Why can't Romney. Difference. Reagan wasn't doing it out of political expediency. Romney changed his position on abortion ONLY for political expediency and nothing else.
I am not sure how we can say that definitively. I believe Romney has dated his "epiphany" on life as a meeting he had in 2004 with a embryonic stem cell researcher. He explained that his study of stem cell research led him to evolve into a firm opponent of abortion and certain forms of stem cell research.
November 9, 2004, stands out as the seminal date for Mitt Romney's metamorphosis from social moderate to self-styled, pro-life, conservative presidential candidate.
On that day, Romney and two aides met with Harvard University stem cell researcher Douglas A. Melton. In Romney's retelling, Melton coolly explained how his work relied on cloning human embryos.
" I sat down with a researcher. And he said, 'Look, you don't have to think about this stem cell research as a moral issue, because we kill the embryos after 14 days,' " Romney recalled on " The Charlie Rose Show " last June, characterizing the meeting as a watershed moment for him. "That struck me as he said that."
Romney said his opposition was not based on a religious belief, but on his feeling that a human cell dividing, as it does in a growing embryo, is alive.
"We're going to need more people to have a change of heart as I have and to look at it very, very carefully and recognize that in civilized society, we recognize that there is a need to respect the fragility and the dignity of human life," he said.
Subsequent to that meeting, Romney vetoed bills on embryonic stem cell research. We seem to give credence to Reagan's epiphany, but not to Romney's.