He did NOT run as a pro-choice candidate.
Fred wonders how it all got started:
In the days since Thompson allowed that he was thinking about running for president, his views on abortion have come under scrutiny. Thompson finds the news reports from his first run for Senate perplexing.
“I have read these accounts and tried to think back 13 years ago as to what may have given rise to them. Although I don’t remember it, I must have said something to someone as I was getting my campaign started that led to a story. Apparently, another story was based upon that story, and then another was based upon that, concluding I was pro-choice.”
But, he adds: “I was interviewed and rated pro-life by the National Right to Life folks in 1994, and I had a 100 percent voting record on abortion issues while in the Senate.”
Darla St. Martin, associate executive director of National Right to Life, supports Thompson on those claims. She traveled to Tennessee in 1994 to meet with him. “I interviewed him and on all of the questions I asked him, he opposed abortion,” she told the American Spectator’s Philip Klein.
- Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, From the April 23, 2007 issue
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/528aylls.asp
National Right to Life Committee on Fred Thompson:
“This morning, I cited reports being promoted by the pro-Romney blog Evangelicals for Mitt suggesting that Fred Thompson ran his two campaigns for Senate in Tennessee as a pro-choicer. Not so, National Right to Life executive co-director Darla St. Martin just told me.
St. Martin said that she went down to Tennessee in 1994 to speak with Thompson personally when he first ran for Senate, and that she determined he was against abortion.
‘I interviewed him and on all of the questions I asked him, he opposed abortion,’ St. Martin said. She told me that the group went on to support him in that election, and his record reinforced for her that their determination was correct.
‘He has a consistent voting record that is pro-life,’ she said.
On the NRLC website, they archive their congressional ratings back to 1997, so they include six of his eight years in the Senate. Thompson took the pro-life position on every vote he cast on the abortion issue...”
http://www.spectator.org/blogger.asp?BlogID=6017
NRLC says Fred is [still] pro-life:
“With 54% of the vote, pro-life former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander (R) won the seat of retiring PRO-LIFE Senator Fred Thompson.”
http://www.nrlc.org/news/2002/NRL11/senate.html
Newt will never get MY vote.
Back in 1996, Fred was in favor of over turning Roe, and he favored states passing reasonable restrictions such as parental notification and restrictions on late term abortions. Fred also spoke out against federal funding for abortions. Fred was against the federal government criminalizing abortions, which in reality is something that won't be on the table anytime soon. Romney supporters like to characterize this as pro-choice just as Romney was, but that simply was not the case. Romney spoke out against any restrictions and thought Roe was great law.
“And I think he has to explain much more persuasively than Mitt Romney did why it is that he is now a pro-life. “
HORSE HOCKEY!
Let Romney explain what he said here in this clip from 2002.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_w9pquznG4
It sure sounded pretty cut and dried that he's pro-life in the statement he made to the group in the video. I really ike the fact that he's coming out in favor of ADULT Stem Cell research!