Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, called recent anti-abortion laws passed in several states “deeply disturbing” and claimed they “clearly undermine the rights and safety of women.”
Weld’s comments came in a column posted Friday on the USA Today website.
“The fact that my stance makes me what the political world calls “pro-choice” does not mean that I am pro-abortion,” he said. “It does not mean that I am anti-life. It does not mean that I would ever support third-trimester terminations of pregnancies, except in those very rare cases where a mother’s life is seriously endangered.
“And it most certainly does not mean that I don’t respect and support the right of other individuals or families or religious groups to reject any possibility of abortion for themselves.”.
Weld said he objects “a group of government officials getting together to make sweeping ontological assumptions about the prenatal vesting of human rights and then using these assumptions as an excuse to step into people’s personal lives.”
He noted laws passed in both Alabama and Georgia “put forward the hypothesis” that unborn fetuses are human beings entitled to legal protection.
But Weld said this is based on religion and not science.
And he added: “Like so many of the unsettling policy and legislative changes enacted under the current administration, the rising tide of extreme anti-abortion legislation seems deliberately designed to seed fear, anger and division, and to undermine our inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
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