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Abortion refers to the termination of pregnancy or gestation at any stage that does not end with live birth, though it is often technically defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo before fetal viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced. The term ''abortion'' most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human rather than non-human pregnancy.

Abortion, when induced in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine. However, unsafe abortions (those performed by persons without proper training or outside of a medical environment) result in approximately 70 thousand maternal deaths and 5 million disabilities per year globally. An estimated 42 million abortions are performed globally each year, with 20 million of those performed unsafely. Forty percent of the world's women are able to access therapeutic and elective abortions within gestational limits.

Induced abortion has a long history and has been facilitated by various methods including herbal abortifacients, the use of sharpened tools, physical trauma, and other traditional methods. Contemporary medicine utilizes medications and surgical procedures to induce abortion. The legality, prevalence, cultural status, and religious status of abortion vary substantially around the world. In many parts of the world there is prominent and divisive public controversy over the ethical and legal issues of abortion. Abortion and abortion-related issues feature prominently in the national politics in many nations, often involving the opposing pro-life and pro-choice worldwide social movements (both self-named). The incidence of abortion has declined worldwide as access to family planning education and contraceptive services has increased.

Types

Induced

Approximately 205 million pregnancies occur each year worldwide. Over a third are unintended and about a fifth end in induced abortion. Most abortions result from unintended pregnancies. A pregnancy can be intentionally aborted in several ways. The manner selected often depends upon the gestational age of the embryo or fetus, which increases in size as the pregnancy progresses. Specific procedures may also be selected due to legality, regional availability, and doctor or patient preference.

Reasons for procuring induced abortions are typically characterized as either therapeutic or elective. An abortion is medically referred to as a therapeutic abortion when it is performed to save the life of the pregnant woman; prevent harm to the woman's physical or mental health; terminate a pregnancy where indications are that the child will have a significantly increased chance of premature morbidity or mortality or be otherwise disabled; or to selectively reduce the number of fetuses to lessen health risks associated with multiple pregnancy. A pregnancy that ends before 37 weeks of gestation resulting in a live-born infant is known as a "premature birth" or a "preterm birth". When a fetus dies in utero after viability, or during delivery, it is usually termed "stillborn". Premature births and stillbirths are generally not considered to be miscarriages although usage of these terms can sometimes overlap.

Only 30 to 50% of conceptions progress past the first trimester. The vast majority of those that do not progress are lost before the woman is aware of the conception, Between 15% and 30% of known pregnancies end in clinically apparent miscarriage, depending upon the age and health of the pregnant woman.

The most common cause of spontaneous abortion during the first trimester is chromosomal abnormalities of the embryo/fetus, accounting for at least 50% of sampled early pregnancy losses. Other causes include vascular disease (such as lupus), diabetes, other hormonal problems, infection, and abnormalities of the uterus. Advancing maternal age and a patient history of previous spontaneous abortions are the two leading factors associated with a greater risk of spontaneous abortion. A spontaneous abortion can also be caused by accidental trauma; intentional trauma or stress to cause miscarriage is considered induced abortion or feticide.

Induction methods

Medical

"Medical abortions" are non-surgical abortions that use pharmaceutical drugs, categorically called abortifacients. In 2005, medical abortions constituted 13% of all abortions in the United States; in 2010 the figure increased to 17%. Combined regimens include methotrexate or mifepristone, followed by a prostaglandin (either misoprostol or gemeprost: misoprostol is used in the U.S.; gemeprost is used in the UK and Sweden.) When used within 49 days gestation, approximately 92% of women undergoing medical abortion with a combined regimen completed it without surgical intervention. Misoprostol can be used alone, but has a lower efficacy rate than combined regimens. In cases of failure of medical abortion, surgical abortion must be use to complete the procedure.

Surgical

In the first 12 weeks, suction-aspiration or vacuum abortion is the most common method. ''Manual vacuum aspiration'' (MVA) abortion consists of removing the fetus or embryo, placenta and membranes by suction using a manual syringe, while ''electric vacuum aspiration'' (EVA) abortion uses an electric pump. These techniques are comparable, and differ in the mechanism used to apply suction, how early in pregnancy they can be used, and whether cervical dilation is necessary. MVA, also known as "mini-suction" and "menstrual extraction", can be used in very early pregnancy, and does not require cervical dilation. Surgical techniques are sometimes referred to as 'Suction (or surgical) Termination Of Pregnancy' (STOP). From the 15th week until approximately the 26th, dilation and evacuation (D&E;) is used. D&E; consists of opening the cervix of the uterus and emptying it using surgical instruments and suction.

''Dilation and curettage'' (D&C;), the second most common method of surgical abortion, is a standard gynecological procedure performed for a variety of reasons, including examination of the uterine lining for possible malignancy, investigation of abnormal bleeding, and abortion. ''Curettage'' refers to cleaning the walls of the uterus with a curette. The World Health Organization recommends this procedure, also called ''sharp curettage,'' only when MVA is unavailable.

Other techniques must be used to induce abortion in the second trimester. Premature delivery can be induced with prostaglandin; this can be coupled with injecting the amniotic fluid with hypertonic solutions containing saline or urea. After the 16th week of gestation, abortions can be induced by intact dilation and extraction (IDX) (also called intrauterine cranial decompression), which requires surgical decompression of the fetus's head before evacuation. IDX is sometimes called "partial-birth abortion," which has been federally banned in the United States. A hysterotomy abortion is a procedure similar to a caesarean section and is performed under general anesthesia. It requires a smaller incision than a caesarean section and is used during later stages of pregnancy.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has recommended that an injection be used to stop the fetal heart during the first phase of the surgical abortion procedure to ensure that the fetus is not born alive.

Other methods

Historically, a number of herbs reputed to possess abortifacient properties have been used in folk medicine: tansy, pennyroyal, black cohosh, and the now-extinct silphium (see history of abortion). The use of herbs in such a manner can cause serious—even lethal—side effects, such as multiple organ failure, and is not recommended by physicians.

Abortion is sometimes attempted by causing trauma to the abdomen. The degree of force, if severe, can cause serious internal injuries without necessarily succeeding in inducing miscarriage. Both accidental and deliberate abortions of this kind can be subject to criminal liability in many countries. In Southeast Asia, there is an ancient tradition of attempting abortion through forceful abdominal massage. One of the bas reliefs decorating the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia depicts a demon performing such an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld.

Reported methods of unsafe, self-induced abortion include misuse of misoprostol, and insertion of non-surgical implements such as knitting needles and clothes hangers into the uterus. These methods are rarely seen in developed countries where surgical abortion is legal and available.

Complications

The health risks of abortion depend on whether the procedure is performed safely or unsafely. The World Health Organization defines unsafe abortions as those performed by unskilled individuals, with hazardous equipment, or in unsanitary facilities.

Safe abortion

Abortion, when performed in the developed world in accordance with local law, is among the safest procedures in medicine for the woman being treated. In the US, the risk of maternal death from abortion is 0.567 per 100,000 procedures, making abortion approximately 14 times safer than childbirth (7.06 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births). The risk of abortion-related mortality increases with increasing gestational age, but remains lower than that of childbirth through at least 21 weeks' gestation.

Vacuum aspiration in the first trimester is the safest method of surgical abortion, and can be performed in a primary care office, abortion clinic, or hospital. Complications are rare and can include uterine perforation, pelvic infection, and retained products of conception requiring a second procedure to evacuate. Preventive antibiotics (such as doxycycline or metronidazole) are typically given before elective abortion, as they are believed to substantially reduce the risk of postoperative uterine infection. Complications after second-trimester abortion are similar to those after first-trimester abortion, and depend somewhat on the method chosen. A 2008 Cochrane Library review found that dilation and evacuation was safer than other means of second-trimester abortion.

Medical abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol is effective through 49 days of gestational age. It has been used in women up to 63 days of gestational age, albeit with an increased risk of failure (requiring surgical abortion). Medical abortion is generally considered as safe as surgical abortion in the first trimester, but is associated with more pain and a lower success rate (requiring surgical abortion). Overall, the risk of uterine infection is lower with medical than with surgical abortion, although in 2005 four deaths after medical abortion were reported due to infection with ''Clostridium sordellii''. As a result, some abortion providers have begun using preventive antibiotics with medical abortion.

Unsafe abortion

In contrast, unsafe abortion is a major cause of injury and death among women worldwide. Although data are imprecise, it is estimated that approximately 20 million unsafe abortions are performed annually, with 97% taking place in developing countries. Unsafe abortion is believed to result in approximately 68,000 deaths (13% of all maternal deaths) and millions of injuries annually. The legal status of abortion is believed to play a major role in the frequency of unsafe abortion. For example, the 1996 legalization of abortion in South Africa had an immediate positive impact on the frequency of abortion-related complications, with abortion-related deaths dropping by more than 90%. Groups such as the World Health Organization have advocated a public-health approach to addressing unsafe abortion, emphasizing the legalization of abortion, the training of medical personnel, and ensuring access to reproductive-health services.

Breast cancer

Although some studies have postulated an association between abortion and breast cancer, the current scientific consensus says no causal relationship exists. Major medical bodies, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, have concluded on the basis of existing evidence that abortion does not cause breast cancer. The concept of a link between induced abortion and breast cancer is promoted primarily by pro-life groups.

Mental health

No scientific research has demonstrated that abortion is a cause of poor mental health in the general population. However there are groups of women who may be at higher risk of coping with problems and distress following abortion. Some factors in a woman's life, such as emotional attachment to the pregnancy, lack of social support, pre-existing psychiatric illness, and conservative views on abortion increase the likelihood of experiencing negative feelings after an abortion. The American Psychological Association (APA) concluded that first trimester abortion does not lead to increased mental health problems, and further research has concluded that later abortions are no different.

Some proposed negative psychological effects of abortion have been referred to by pro-life advocates as a separate condition called "post-abortion syndrome". However, the existence of "post-abortion syndrome" is not recognized by any medical or psychological organization.

Incidence

There are two commonly used methods of measuring the incidence of abortion:

Abortion rate – number of abortions per 1000 women between 15 and 44 years of age

Abortion ratio – number of abortions out of 100 known pregnancies (excluding miscarriages and stillbirths)

The number of abortions performed worldwide has decreased between 1995 and 2003 from 45.6 million to 41.6 million, which means a decrease in abortion rate from 35 to 29 per 1000 women. The greatest decrease has occurred in the developed world with a drop from 39 to 26 per 1000 women in comparison to the developing world, which had a decrease from 34 to 29 per 1000 women. Out of a total of about 42 million abortions 22 million occurred safely and 20 million unsafely.

On average, the frequency of abortions is similar in developing countries (where abortion is generally restricted) to the frequency in developed countries (where abortion is generally much less restricted). Abortion rates are very difficult to measure in locations where those abortions are illegal, and pro-life groups have criticized researchers for allegedly jumping to conclusions about those numbers. According to the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund, the abortion rate in developing countries is largely attributable to lack of access to modern contraceptives; assuming no change in abortion laws, providing that access to contraceptives would result in about 25 million fewer abortions annually, including almost 15 million fewer unsafe abortions.

The incidence of induced abortion varies regionally. Some countries, such as Belgium (11.2 out of 100 known pregnancies) and the Netherlands (10.6 per 100), had a comparatively low ratio of induced abortion. Others like Russia (62.6 out of 100), Romania (63 out of 100) and Vietnam (43.7 out of 100) had a high ratio (data for last three countries of unknown completeness). The estimated world ratio was 26%, the world rate - 35 per 1000 women.

By gestational age and method

Abortion rates also vary depending on the stage of pregnancy and the method practiced. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 26% of abortions were known to have been obtained at less than 6 weeks' gestation, 18% at 7 weeks, 15% at 8 weeks, 4.1% at 16 through 20 weeks and 1.4% at more than 21 weeks. 90.9% of these were classified as having been done by "curettage" (suction-aspiration, Dilation and curettage, Dilation and evacuation), 7.7% by "medical" means (mifepristone), 0.4% by "intrauterine instillation" (saline or prostaglandin), and 1.0% by "other" (including hysterotomy and hysterectomy). According to the CDC, due to data collection difficulties the data must be viewed as tentative and some fetal deaths reported beyond 20 weeks may be natural deaths erroneously classified as abortions if the removal of the fetus is accomplished by the same procedure as an induced abortion.

The Guttmacher Institute estimated there were 2,200 intact dilation and extraction procedures in the U.S. during 2000; this accounts for 0.17% of the total number of abortions performed that year. Similarly, in England and Wales in 2006, 89% of terminations occurred at or under 12 weeks, 9% between 13 to 19 weeks, and 1.5% at or over 20 weeks. 64% of those reported were by vacuum aspiration, 6% by D&E;, and 30% were medical. Later abortions are more common in China, India, and other developing countries than in developed countries.

Personal and social factors

A 1998 study from 27 countries on the reasons women seek to terminate their pregnancies concluded that the most common reason women cited for having an abortion was to postpone childbearing to a more suitable time or to focus energies and resources on existing children. The most commonly reported reasons were socioeconomic factors such as being unable to afford a child either in terms of the direct costs of raising a child or the loss of income while she is caring for the child, lack of support from the father, inability to afford additional children, desire to provide schooling for existing children, disruption of education, relationship problems with a husband or partner, the perception that she is too young, and unemployment. A 2004 study in which American women at clinics answered a questionnaire yielded similar results. A 1998 survey found risk to maternal health cited as the main reason by 5-10% in seven countries and by 20-38% in three (Kenya, Bangladesh and India). A 1997 U.S. report cited maternal health the "most important reason" for their decision by 3% of women and another 3% cited concern that the fetus had a health problem. In a 2004 survey-based U.S. study, 1% of women having abortions became pregnant as a result of rape and 0.5% as a result of incest. Another American study in 2002 concluded that 54% of women who had an abortion were using a form of contraception at the time of becoming pregnant while 46% were not. Inconsistent use was reported by 49% of those using condoms and 76% of those using the combined oral contraceptive pill; 42% of those using condoms reported failure through slipping or breakage. The Guttmacher Institute estimated that "most abortions in the United States are obtained by minority women" because minority women "have much higher rates of unintended pregnancy."

Some abortions are undergone as the result of societal pressures. These might include the stigmatization of disabled people, preference for children of a specific sex, disapproval of single motherhood, insufficient economic support for families, lack of access to or rejection of contraceptive methods, or efforts toward population control (such as China's one-child policy). These factors can sometimes result in compulsory abortion or sex-selective abortion.

Unsafe abortion

Women seeking to terminate their pregnancies sometimes resort to unsafe methods, particularly when access to legal abortion is restricted. About one in eight pregnancy-related deaths worldwide are associated with unsafe abortion.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines an unsafe abortion as being "a procedure ... carried out by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards, or both." They may be performed by the woman herself, by another person without medical training, or by a healthcare professional operating in sub-standard conditions. Unsafe abortion remains a public health concern due to the higher incidence and severity of its associated complications, such as incomplete abortion, sepsis, hemorrhage, and damage to internal organs.

The legality of abortion is one of the main determinants of its safety. Restrictive abortion laws are associated with a high rate of unsafe abortions. In addition, a lack of access to safe and effective contraception contributes to unsafe abortion. It has been estimated that the incidence of unsafe abortion could be reduced by as much as 73% without any change in abortion laws if modern family planning and maternal health services were readily available globally.

Forty percent of the world's women are able to access therapeutic and elective abortions within gestational limits. While maternal mortality seldom results from safe abortions, unsafe abortions result in 70,000 deaths and 5 million disabilities per year. Complications of unsafe abortion account for approximately 12% of maternal mortalities in Asia, 25% in Latin America, and 13% in sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary infertility caused by an unsafe abortion affects an estimated 24 million women. Although the global rate of abortion declined from 45.6 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, unsafe procedures still accounted for 48% of all abortions performed in 2003. Health education, access to family planning, and improvements in health care during and after abortion have been proposed to address this phenomenon.

History

Induced abortion has long history, and can be traced back to civilizations as varied as China under Shennong (c. 2700 BCE), Ancient Egypt with its Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BCE), and the Roman Empire in the time of Juvenal (c. 200 CE). However, other modern scholars disagree with this interpretation, In Christianity, Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) is noted as the first Pope to declare that abortion is homicide regardless of the stage of pregnancy; the Church had previously been divided on whether if believed that abortion was murder, and did not begin vigorously opposing abortion until the 19th century. However, abortion is largely heavily restricted or forbidden in areas of high Islamic faith such as the Middle East and North Africa.

In Europe and North America, abortion techniques advanced starting in the 17th century. However, conservatism by most physicians with regards to sexual matters prevented the wide expansion of safe abortion techniques. The Soviet Union (1919), Iceland (1935) and Sweden (1938) were among the first countries to legalize certain or all forms of abortion. In 1935 Nazi Germany, a law was passed permitting abortions for those deemed "hereditarily ill," while women considered of German stock were specifically prohibited from having abortions.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, due to a confluence of factors, the number of reported abortions increased worldwide. In West Germany, the number of reported abortions increased from 2,800 in 1968 to 87,702 in 1980. In the United States, legalization of abortion in multiple states in 1967-70 was followed by a landmark decision in ''Roe v. Wade'' (1973), which legalized the procedure nationwide. This led to explosive growth in the number of reported abortions: In 1966, only 1028 abortions were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 1980, 1.3 million were reported to the CDC, giving a ratio of 359 abortions per 1,000 live births. The Guttmacher Institute estimates the total number of abortions in 1980 (including those unreported to CDC) to be 1.55 million.

Society and culture

Abortion debate

In the history of abortion, induced abortion has been the source of considerable debate, controversy, and activism. An individual's position on the complex ethical, moral, philosophical, biological, and legal issues is often related to his or her value system. The main positions are one that argues in favor of access to abortion and one argues against access to abortion. Opinions of abortion may be described as being a combination of beliefs on its morality, and beliefs on the responsibility, ethical scope, and proper extent of governmental authorities in public policy. Religious ethics also has an influence upon both personal opinion and the greater debate over abortion (see religion and abortion).

Abortion debates, especially pertaining to abortion laws, are often spearheaded by groups advocating one of these two positions. In the United States, those in favor of greater legal restrictions on, or even complete prohibition of abortion, most often describe themselves as pro-life while those against legal restrictions on abortion describe themselves as pro-choice. Generally, the former position argues that a human fetus is a human being with a right to live making abortion tantamount to murder. The latter position argues that a woman has certain reproductive rights, especially the choice whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.

In both public and private debate, arguments presented in favor of or against abortion access focus on either the moral permissibility of an induced abortion, or justification of laws permitting or restricting abortion.

Debate also focuses on whether the pregnant woman should have to notify and/or have the consent of others in distinct cases: for a minor, her parents; for a legally married or common-law wife, her husband; or, for any case, the biological father. In a 2003 Gallup poll in the United States, 79% of male and 67% of female respondents were in favor of legalized mandatory spousal notification; overall support was 72% with 26% opposed.

Abortion law

The earliest secular laws regulating abortion reflect a concern with class and caste purity and preservation of male prerogatives. Abortion as such was not outlawed, but wives who procured abortions without their husband's knowledge could be severely punished, as could slaves who induced abortions in highborn women. Generally, abortions prior to quickening were treated as minor crimes, if at all.

The new philosophies of the Axial Age, which began discussing the nature and value of human life in abstract terms, had little impact on existing abortion laws. Even the Christian ecclesiastical courts of the Middle Ages imposed penance and no corporal punishment for abortion, and retained the pre- and post-quickening distinction from the ancient philosophies.

With the sole exception of Bracton, commentators on the English common law formulated the born alive rule, excluding feticide from homicide law, using language dating back to the Leges Henrici Primi.

In the late 18th century, it was claimed that scientific knowledge of human development beginning at fertilization justified stricter abortion laws. This was part of a larger struggle on the part of the medical profession to distinguish scientifically based medicine from "traditional" medicine, including midwifery and herbalism.

Both pre- and post-quickening abortions were criminalized by Lord Ellenborough's Act in 1803. In 1861, the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the ''Offences against the Person Act 1861'', which continued to outlaw abortion and served as a model for similar prohibitions in some other nations.

The Soviet Union, with legislation in 1920, and Iceland, with legislation in 1935, were two of the first countries to generally allow abortion. The second half of the 20th century saw the liberalization of abortion laws in other countries as well. The ''Abortion Act 1967'' allowed abortion for limited reasons in the United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland). In the 1973 case, ''Roe v. Wade'', the United States Supreme Court struck down state laws banning abortion, ruling that such laws violated an implied right to privacy in the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court of Canada, similarly, in the case of ''R. v. Morgentaler'', discarded its criminal code regarding abortion in 1988, after ruling that such restrictions violated the security of person guaranteed to women under the ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms''. Canada later struck down provincial regulations of abortion in the case of ''R. v. Morgentaler (1993).'' By contrast, abortion in Ireland was affected by the addition of an amendment to the Irish Constitution in 1983 by popular referendum, recognizing "the right to life of the unborn".

Current laws pertaining to abortion are diverse. Religious, moral, and cultural sensibilities continue to influence abortion laws throughout the world. The right to life, the right to liberty, the right to security of person, and the right to reproductive health are major issues of human rights that are sometimes used as justification for the existence or absence of laws controlling abortion. Many countries in which abortion is legal require that certain criteria be met in order for an abortion to be obtained, often, but not always, using a trimester-based system to regulate the window of legality: In the United States, some states impose a 24-hour waiting period before the procedure, prescribe the distribution of information on fetal development, or require that parents be contacted if their minor daughter requests an abortion. In the United Kingdom, as in some other countries, two doctors must first certify that an abortion is medically or socially necessary before it can be performed.

Other countries, in which abortion is normally illegal, will allow one to be performed in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the pregnant woman's life or health. A few nations ban abortion entirely: Chile, El Salvador, Malta, and Nicaragua. In Nicaragua, rises in maternal death directly and indirectly due to pregnancy have been noted. However, in 2006, the Chilean government began the free distribution of emergency contraception. In Bangladesh, abortion is illegal, but the government has long supported a network of "menstrual regulation clinics", where menstrual extraction (manual vacuum aspiration) can be performed as menstrual hygiene.

In places where abortion is illegal or carries heavy social stigma, pregnant women may engage in medical tourism and travel to countries where they can terminate their pregnancies. Women without the means to travel can resort to providers of illegal abortions or try to do it themselves.

In the US, about 8% of abortions are performed on women who travel from another state. However, that is driven at least partly by differing limits on abortion according to gestational age or the scarcity of doctors trained and willing to do later abortions. Thousands of women every year travel from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Poland, and other countries where elective abortion is illegal, to Britain or other countries with less restrictive laws, in order to obtain abortions.

In the United States and some Canadian localities, it is a legal offense to obstruct access to a clinic or doctor's office where abortions are performed. "Buffer zones," regulating how close protesters can come to the clinic or to the patients, may exist.

Mandatory spousal notification was ruled unconstitutional in the United States by the Supreme Court in ''Planned Parenthood v. Casey''.

Other issues in abortion law may include the requirement that a minor obtain the consent of one or both parents to the abortion or that she notify one or both parents, the requirement that a woman obtain the consent of her husband to the abortion and the question of whether the fetus's father can prohibit an abortion, the requirement that abortion providers inform patients of the supposed health risks of the procedure, and wrongful birth laws.

Sex-selective

Sonography and amniocentesis allow parents to determine sex before childbirth. The development of this technology has led to sex-selective abortion, or the termination of a fetus based on sex. The selective termination of a female fetus is most common.

It is suggested that sex-selective abortion might be partially responsible for the noticeable disparities between the birth rates of male and female children in some places. The preference for male children is reported in many areas of Asia, and abortion used to limit female births has been reported in China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India.

In India, the economic role of men, the costs associated with dowries, and a common Indian tradition which dictates that funeral rites must be performed by a male relative have led to a cultural preference for sons. The widespread availability of diagnostic testing, during the 1970s and '80s, led to advertisements for services which read, "Invest 500 rupees [for a sex test] now, save 50,000 rupees [for a dowry] later." In 1991, the male-to-female sex ratio in India was skewed from its biological norm of 105 to 100, to an average of 108 to 100. Researchers have asserted that between 1985 and 2005 as many as 10 million female fetuses may have been selectively aborted. The Indian government passed an official ban of pre-natal sex screening in 1994 and banned sex-selective abortion in 2002, although it had already previously outlawed abortion except to save the life of the mother.

In the People's Republic of China, there is also a historic son preference. The implementation of the one-child policy in 1979, in response to population concerns, led to an increased disparity in the sex ratio as parents attempted to circumvent the law through sex-selective abortion or the abandonment of unwanted daughters. Sex-selective abortion might be an influence on the shift from the baseline male-to-female birth rate to an elevated national rate of 117:100 reported in 2002. The trend was more pronounced in rural regions: as high as 130:100 in Guangdong and 135:100 in Hainan. A ban upon the practice of sex-selective abortion was enacted in 2003.

Anti-abortion violence

Doctors and facilities that provide abortion have been subjected to various forms of violence, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, stalking, assault, arson, and bombing. Anti-abortion violence has been classified by governmental and scholarly sources as terrorism. Only a small fraction of those opposed to abortion commit violence, often rationalizing their actions as justifiable homicide or defense of others, committed in order to protect the lives of fetuses.

In the United States, four abortion providers—Drs. David Gunn, John Britton, Barnett Slepian, and George Tiller—have been assassinated. Attempted assassinations have also taken place in the United States and Canada, and other personnel at abortion clinics, including receptionists and security guards, have been killed in the United States and Australia. Hundreds of bombings, arsons, acid attacks, invasions, and incidents of vandalism against abortion providers have also occurred. Notable perpetrators of anti-abortion violence include Eric Robert Rudolph, Scott Roeder, Shelley Shannon, and Paul Jennings Hill, the first person to be executed in the United States for murdering an abortion provider.

Art, literature and film

Art serves to humanize the abortion issue and illustrates the myriad of decisions and consequences it has. One of the earliest known representations of abortion is in a bas relief at Angkor Wat (c. 1150). Pro-life activist Børre Knudsen was linked to a 1994 art theft as part of a pro-life drive in Norway surrounding the 1994 Winter Olympics. A Swiss gallery removed a piece from a Chinese art collection in 2005, that had the head of a fetus attached to the body of a bird. In 2008, a Yale student proposed using aborted excretions and the induced abortion itself as a performance art project.

''The Cider House Rules'' (novel 1985, film 1999) follows the story of Dr. Larch an orphanage director who is a reluctant abortionist after seeing the consequences of back-alley abortions, and his orphan medical assistant Homer who is against abortion. Feminist novels such as ''Braided Lives'' (1997) by Marge Piercy emphasize the struggles women had in dealing with unsafe abortion in various circumstances prior to legalization. Physician Susan Wicklund wrote ''This Common Secret'' (2007) about how a personal traumatic abortion experience hardened her resolve to provide compassionate care to women who decide to have an abortion. As Wicklund crisscrosses the West to provide abortion services to remote clinics, she tells the stories of women she's treated and the sacrifices she and her loved ones made. In 2009, Irene Vilar revealed her past abuse and addiction to abortion in ''Impossible Motherhood'', where she aborted 15 pregnancies in 17 years. According to Vilar it was the result of a dark psychological cycle of power, rebellion and societal expectations. In Annie Finch's mythic epic poem and opera libretto '' Among the Goddesses'' (2010), the heroine's abortion is contextualized spiritually by the goddesses Demeter, Kali, and Inanna.

Various options and realities of abortion have been dramatized in film. In ''Riding in Cars with Boys'' (2001) an underage woman carries her pregnancy to term as abortion is not an affordable option, moves in with the father and finds herself involved with drugs, has no opportunities, and questioning if she loves her child. While in ''Juno'' (2007) a 16-year-old initially goes to have an abortion but decides to bear the child and allow a wealthy couple to adopt it. Other films ''Dirty Dancing'' (1987) and ''If These Walls Could Talk'' (1996) explore the availability, affordability and dangers of illegal abortions. The emotional impact of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy alone is the focus of ''Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her'' (2000) and ''Circle of Friends'' (1995). As a marriage was in trouble in the ''The Godfather Part II'' (1974) Kay knew the relationship was over when she aborted "a son" in secret. On the abortion debate, an irresponsible drug addict is used as a pawn in a power struggle between pro-choice and pro-life groups in ''Citizen Ruth'' (1996). The ''Law & Order'' television episode "Dignity" deals with the trial of a man who killed a late-term abortion doctor; the storyline was inspired by the assassination of abortion provider George Tiller.

In other animals

Spontaneous abortion occurs in various animals. For example, in sheep, it may be caused by crowding through doors, or being chased by dogs. In cows, abortion may be caused by contagious disease, such as Brucellosis or Campylobacter, but can often be controlled by vaccination.

Abortion may also be induced in animals, in the context of animal husbandry. For example, abortion may be induced in mares that have been mated improperly, or that have been purchased by owners who did not realize the mares were pregnant, or that are pregnant with twin foals.

Feticide can occur in horses and zebras due to male harassment of pregnant mares or forced copulation, although the frequency in the wild has been questioned. Male gray langur monkeys may attack females following male takeover, causing miscarriage.

Notes

References

External links

Abortion Policies: A Global Review

MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Abortion

Category:Reproduction Category:Core issues in ethics Category:Gynaecology Category:Pregnancy Category:Obstetrics Category:Gender studies Category:Fertility Category:Article Feedback Pilot

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birthname	Richard John Santorum
jr/sr	United States Senator
state	Pennsylvania
party	Republican
term	January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2007
preceded	Harris Wofford
succeeded	Bob Casey, Jr.
state2	Pennsylvania
district2	18th
term2	January 3, 1991 – January 3, 1995
preceded2	Doug Walgren
succeeded2	Mike Doyle
birth date	May 10, 1958
birth place	Winchester, Virginia
dead	alive
occupation	Attorney, politician
residence	Penn Hills, Pennsylvania
law school	Dickinson School of Law, 1986
spouse	Karen Garver Santorum
alma mater	Pennsylvania State University University of Pittsburgh Dickinson School of Law
religion	Christian (Roman Catholic)
footnotes	}}

Richard John "Rick" Santorum (born May 10, 1958) is a lawyer and a former United States Senator from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Santorum is a member of the Republican Party and was the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.

Santorum is considered both a social and fiscal conservative. He is known for his stances on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Social Security, intelligent design, homosexuality, and the Terri Schiavo case.

In March 2007, Santorum joined the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC. He was to primarily practice law in the firm’s Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., offices, where he was to provide business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. In addition to his work with the firm, Santorum also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and was a contributor to Fox News Channel.

Santorum is a candidate for president of the United States in the 2012 election. He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011, and formally announced his candidacy on June 6.

Early life, education, and legal career

Santorum was born in Winchester, Virginia, and raised in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and Butler County, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Aldo Santorum (born 1923) and Catherine Keane (née Dughi; born 1918). His father was an Italian immigrant, and his mother was of half Italian and half Irish descent.

Both of Santorum's parents worked at the Veterans’ Administration (VA) Hospital in Butler, and the family lived on the VA hospital post. His father became licensed as a psychologist in August 1974. He attended schools in the Butler Area School District, where he gained the nickname “Rooster”, allegedly because he "always had a few errant hairs on the back of his head that refused to stay down", and he was "noisy, showy, dogged and determined like a rooster and never backed down".

Santorum graduated from Carmel High School in Mundelein, Illinois, in 1976, where his father transferred within the VA hospital system. He lists his residency as Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, and maintains a home in Leesburg, Virginia, for his work in Washington, D.C.

Santorum earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, having majored in Political Science, from The Pennsylvania State University in 1980, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. He is a member of Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity.

In 1986, Santorum earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the Dickinson School of Law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar, and began practicing law in Pittsburgh. While working at the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, he represented the World Wrestling Federation, arguing that professional wrestling should be exempt from federal anabolic steroid regulations because it was not a sport. Santorum left private practice after first being elected to the House in November 1990.

Family

Santorum and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, have seven children: Elizabeth Anne (born 1991); Richard John ("Johnny"), Jr. (born 1993); Daniel James (born 1995); Sarah Maria (born 1998); Peter Kenneth (born 1999); Patrick Francis (born 2001); and Isabella "Bella" Maria (born 2008). Bella was subsequently diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a serious genetic disorder which is fatal before birth in 90 per cent of cases. In 1996, their son Gabriel Michael was born prematurely and lived for only two hours (a sonogram taken before Gabriel was born revealed that his posterior urethral valve was closed and that the prognosis for his survival was therefore poor). While pregnant, Karen Santorum developed a life-threatening intrauterine infection and a fever that reached nearly 105 degrees. She went into labor when she was 20 weeks pregnant and allowed doctors to give her Oxytocin to speed the birth.

Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: ''Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum''. In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as "your brother Gabriel" and slept with the body overnight before returning it to the hospital. The anecdote was also written about by Michael Sokolove in a 2005 ''New York Times Magazine'' story on Santorum. Karen is also the author of a book on etiquette for children.

Santorum and his family usually attend Latin Mass at Saint Catherine of Siena Church, near Washington, D.C. On November 12, 2004, Santorum and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.

Political career

Santorum first became actively involved in politics through volunteering for the late Senator John Heinz.

After earning his Juris Doctor, Santorum became an administrative assistant to Republican State Senator Doyle Corman (until 1986). He was director of the Pennsylvanian Senate's local government committee from 1981 to 1984, then director of the Pennsylvanian Senate's Transportation Committee until 1986.

In 1990, at age 32, Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 18th District, located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He scored a significant upset, defeating a seven-term Democratic incumbent, Doug Walgren. Although the 18th was heavily Democratic, Santorum attacked Walgren for living outside the district for most of the year. He was re-elected in 1992, in part because the district lost its share of Pittsburgh as a result of redistricting. In Congress, as a member of the Gang of Seven, Santorum worked to expose congressional corruption by naming the guilty parties in the House banking scandal.

In 1994, at the age of 36, Santorum was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating the incumbent Democrat, Harris Wofford, who was 32 years older. The theme of Santorum's 1994 campaign signs was "Join the Fight!" Santorum was re-elected in 2000 defeating Congressman Ron Klink by a 52.4% to 45.5% margin.

In 1996 he endorsed Arlen Specter for president.

In a 2002 PoliticsPA feature story designating politicians with yearbook superlatives, he was named the "Most Ambitious".

As chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, Santorum directed the communications operations of Senate Republicans and was a frequent party spokesperson. He was the youngest member of the Senate leadership and the first Pennsylvanian to hold such a prominent position since Senator Hugh Scott was Republican leader in the 1970s. In addition, Santorum served on the Senate Agriculture Committee; the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; the Senate Special Committee on Aging; and the Senate Finance Committee, of which he was the chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy.

In January 2005, Santorum announced his intention to run for United States Senate Republican Whip, the second-highest post in the Republican caucus after the 2006 election. The move came because it was presumed the incumbent whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was viewed as having the inside track to succeeding Bill Frist of Tennessee as Senate Republican leader.

During the lame-duck session of the 109th Congress, Santorum was one of only two senators who voted against Robert Gates to become Secretary of Defense. He opposed Gates' advocacy of engaging Iran and Syria to solve the problem, saying that talking to "radical Islam" would be an error.

During his third term re-election campaign for his Senate seat against Bob Casey, Jr., Santorum introduced the term "Islamic fascism", while questioning "his opponent's ability to make the right decisions on national security at a time when 'our enemies are fully committed to our destruction.'"

Santorum sat at the Senate's candy desk for ten years and kept it stocked with Hershey’s chocolates, Peanut Chews and Hot Tamales.

Santorum was defeated 59% to 41% in the 2006 U.S. Senate election by Democratic candidate Bob Casey, Jr. This was the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent Senator since 1980.

Political ideology

He is known for his “confrontational, partisan, ‘in your face’ style of politics and government.”

In September 2005, Santorum gave a speech that outlined the successes and failures—but more centrally the future—of conservatism, at the Heritage Foundation's First International Conservative Conference on Social Justice. In November 2005, he adapted his speech into an op-ed piece for the political website Townhall.com outlining his vision for "Compassionate Conservatism".

The Associated Press reported that on July 20, 2006, Santorum stated that "Islamic fascism rooted in Iran is behind much of the world's conflict, but he is opposed to military action against the country", in a speech where he "also defended the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay." The senator indicated that "effective action against Iran" would require America's fighting "for a strong Lebanon, a strong Israel, and a strong Iraq."

On September 7, 2006, Santorum outlined his views on foreign policy in an op-ed piece for the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' and discussed Islamic fascism, closing with a rally cry:

Santorum has referred to his grandfather's historical encounter with Italian fascism as an inspiration for his 2012 presidential campaign.

Legislation and issues

Santorum has attracted support and criticism because of his socially conservative and strong views, including his views on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. His views are presented in his 2005 book, ''It Takes a Family'', published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Delaware.

Santorum has been active in addressing the issues of welfare reform and government accountability. He is a self-described conservative who favors restricting or prohibiting abortion. Santorum has said he is personally against abortion and has expressed disapproval of homosexuality, issues that he believes should be decided by elected officials rather than the Supreme Court: “what I’d like to do is have these kinds of incredibly important moral issues be decided by the American public, not by nine unelected, unaccountable judges.”

Illegal immigration

In 2006, Santorum opposed the Senate immigration reform proposal. Instead, Santorum stated that the U.S. should act to enforce currently existing laws. He has openly stated his strong opposition to amnesty for undocumented immigrants. He supports the construction of a barrier along the U.S.–Mexican border, an increase in the number of border patrol agents on the border, and the stationing of National Guard troops along the border. He also believes that undocumented immigrants should be deported immediately when they commit crimes, and that undocumented immigrants should not receive benefits from the government. Finally, the former senator believes that English should be established as the national language in the United States.

Intelligent design

In 2001, Santorum tried unsuccessfully to insert language which came to be known as the "Santorum Amendment" into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools. The amendment, crafted with the assistance of the Discovery Institute, would have required schools to discuss possible controversies surrounding scientific topics, and gave the theory of evolution as an example, opening the door for intelligent design as an opposing theory to be presented in science classrooms. A federal court in Santorum's own state, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis", portraying it as being the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.

Though not included in the final version of the Act made law, the language from the amendment was included in a report attached to the Act known as the Conference Report. The Discovery Institute and many intelligent design proponents, including two Ohio Congressmen, have repeatedly invoked this to suggest that intelligent design should be included in public school science standards as an alternative to evolution.

In a 2002 ''Washington Times'' op-ed article Santorum wrote that intelligent design "is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." By 2005 Santorum had adopted the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy approach, stating in an interview with National Public Radio "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom. What we should be teaching are the problems and holes, and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution", a statement which mirrors the Teach the Controversy strategy, the most recent iteration of the intelligent design movement. The day after the ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'' decision that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature came down, Santorum announced that he was resigning from the advisory board of the Thomas More Law Center which had defended the Dover school board. Most recently Santorum wrote the foreword for the March 2006 book, ''Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson And the Intelligent Design Movement'' a collection of essays largely by Discovery Institute fellows honoring the "father" of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson.

Workplace Religious Freedom Act

Santorum and U.S. Senator John Kerry, (D-MA), were the lead sponsors of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), which would require employers to accommodate the religious observances of their employees as long as such accommodations would not impose an "undue hardship" on the employer. Thus, employers would be required to afford employees flexible work shifts so that they could observe religious holidays and to permit employees to wear religiously required clothing at work. Versions of the WRFA have been introduced in 1997, 2000, and 2003, but have failed to be enacted.

National Weather Service

On April 14, 2005, Santorum introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 to "clarify the duties and responsibilities of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service (NWS), and for other purposes". This legislation, if enacted, would prohibit the NWS from publishing weather data to the public when private-sector entities, such as AccuWeather, a company based in Santorum's home state, perform the same function commercially. Accuweather employees have contributed at least $5500 to Santorum since 1999, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Opponents of this bill contend that weather data is collected at taxpayer expense, and therefore it should be made freely available to the public, and not provided solely to private corporations that will charge fees for access. They also claim that the vague language in the bill is an attempt to prevent the NWS from issuing free forecasts because such functions are currently provided by the private sector and would be considered competition.

The bill was never enacted or voted upon, dying in committee.

Statements regarding homosexuality

A controversy arose following Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press that was published on April 20, 2003. In response to a question about how to prevent sexual abuse of children by priests, Santorum said the priests were engaged in "a basic homosexual relationship", and went on to say that he had "[...] no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts"; that the right to privacy, as detailed in ''Griswold v. Connecticut,'' "doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution"; that, "whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family"; and that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts that "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family". When the Associated Press reporter asked whether homosexuals should not then engage in homosexual acts, Santorum replied, "Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality".

When questioned for his remarks, Santorum stated that they were intended not to equate homosexuality with incest and pedophilia, but rather as a critique of the specific legal position that the right to privacy prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults (such as bigamy, incest, etc.).

In protest of the remarks, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched a contest among his readers in May 2003 to coin a new word "santorum" with an unflattering sexual definition, and followed this with a Google bombing campaign to spread the new term. Since 2004, Savage's Google bomb has regularly been the top search result for Santorum's surname, leading to what commentators have dubbed "Santorum's Google problem". Santorum has characterized the campaign as a "type of vulgarity" common on the Internet.

During the presidential debate held August 11, 2011, in Ames, Iowa, Santorum stated that the Iranian regime "tramples the rights of gays", suggesting that he opposes bias against gays as part of his general support for past U.S.-backed intervention in domestic Iranian politics.

Comments about the Boston Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal

In 2005, a controversy developed over comments about Boston, Massachusetts, that Santorum made in a 2002 article about the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Santorum wrote: }}

These comments came to wider attention through an opinion column in the ''Philadelphia Daily News'' on June 24, 2005. Columnist John Baer cited Santorum's article, stating, "I'd remind you this is the same Senate leader who recently likened Democrats fighting to save the filibuster to Nazis."

Santorum's remarks were criticized, especially in Massachusetts. On July 12, 2005, ''Boston Globe'' columnist Brian McGrory called on Santorum to explain his statement, and reported that Robert Traynham, Santorum's Director of Communications, told him "It's an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases. I think that's what the senator was speaking to." Julie Teer, a spokeswoman for Governor of Massachusetts, Republican Mitt Romney, said "What happened with the church sex abuse scandal was a tragedy, but it had nothing to do with geography or the culture of Boston."

Later that day, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) delivered a personal rebuke to Santorum on the Senate floor, saying "The people of Boston are to blame for the clergy sexual abuse? That is an irresponsible, insensitive and inexcusable thing to say." Santorum has stood by his 2002 article and has not apologized.

On July 21, 2005, Rush Limbaugh interviewed Santorum about Kennedy's speech. Santorum said that he was being targeted by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which, he said, coordinated with the media to publicize Kennedy's speech. He argued that his statement about Boston was taken out of context from an article he had written three years earlier. Santorum agreed with Limbaugh's summary that it was "no surprise that the center of the Catholic Church abuse took place in very liberal, or perhaps the nation's most liberal area, Boston." Santorum reiterated his broader theme of a cultural connection, saying that it is "no surprise that the culture affects people's behavior. [...] the liberal culture—the idea that [...] sexual inhibitions should be put aside and people should be able to do whatever they want to do, has an impact on people and how they behave." When asked why Boston specifically was mentioned, Santorum pointed out that, in July 2002, the outrage of American Catholics, as well as his own, was focused on the Archdiocese of Boston.

Hurricane Katrina

On September 4, 2005, Santorum spoke to a Pittsburgh television station, WTAE, about the evacuation warnings given for Hurricane Katrina:

The campaign of Bob Casey, Jr., his Democratic opponent for the Senate, criticized Santorum's remarks.

On September 6, in a follow-up interview with WTAE, Santorum said,

On September 8, during an interview with public-radio station WITF-FM, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Santorum said

Santorum was the sponsor of legislation proposed to ''prevent'' the National Weather Service from issuing those warnings, thus competing with private-sector weather services, as discussed above.

Santorum added a synthetic-fuel tax-credit amendment to a larger bill introduced in the Senate by Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who headed the Senate Finance Committee. ''Time Magazine'' called this tax-credit scheme "a multibillion-dollar scam." The amendment was inserted in the Tax Relief Act of 2006, which provides aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and sets new policies for tax-exempt groups.

Pennsylvania residency and tuition fee

In November 2004, a controversy developed over education costs for Santorum's children. Santorum's legal address is a three-bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he purchased for $87,800 in 1997 and is located next to the home of his wife's parents. But since 2001, he has spent most of the year in Leesburg, Virginia, a town about one hour's drive west of Washington, D.C., and about 90 minutes' drive south of the Pennsylvania border, in a house he purchased for $643,000. The ''Penn Hills Progress'', a local paper, reported that Santorum and his wife paid about $2,000 per year in property taxes on their Pennsylvania home ($487.20 per year to Allegheny County, 2006 through 2008, based on a 2007 value of $106,000, plus Penn Hills School District tax). The paper also found that another couple—possibly renters—were registered voters at the same address.

At the time the issue arose, Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District. At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000.

When news reports showed Sen. Santorum was renting his Penn Hills home, Santorum withdrew his five children from the cyber education program that Penn Hills School District paid for. That saved Penn Hills taxpayers about $38,000 a year. Although Santorum said he would make other arrangements for his children's education, he insisted that he did not owe the school board any back tuition. Once the controversy surfaced, the children were withdrawn from the cyber school and were then home schooled.

On July 8, 2005, a Pennsylvania state hearing officer had ruled that the Penn Hills School District had not filed objections to Santorum's residency in a timely manner and dismissed the complaint. Santorum hailed the ruling as a victory against what he termed "baseless and politically motivated charges". Santorum told reporters that "[n]o one's children—and especially not small, school-age children—should be used as pawns in the 'politics of personal destruction.'" In the 2006 senate campaign, Santorum ran television commercials with Santorum's son saying "My dad's opponents have criticized him for moving us to Washington so we could be with him more."

In September 2006, the Pennsylvania Department of Education agreed to pay the district $55,000 to settle the dispute over money withheld from the district to pay for the children of U.S. Senator Rick Santorum to attend a cyber charter school.

The matter rose again in May 2006. Santorum has said that his family stays during holidays and at times on weekends at the Penn Hills house. But the ''Progress'' reported in May that the house appeared unoccupied, and Casey's campaign noted that in a press release. Santorum then accused Casey's campaign of supporting trespassing on his property, saying of Casey "Now that he is a nominee, it is time for him to start acting like a candidate instead of a thug." Casey, in a statement, called the charges "false and malicious." His campaign, in a news release, described Santorum's actions as "weirdness".

In September 2006, Santorum formally asked that the county remove the homestead tax exemption from his Penn Hills residence. He said that he had made similar requests to county officials in conversations in 2005 and earlier in 2006, but to no avail. In his letter, Santorum insisted that he was entitled to the exemption, which is worth about $70 annually, but chose not to take advantage of it because of the political dispute. While homeowners in the county are eligible for a tax savings averaging $70 a year on their primary residences, the county council president noted that Santorum had "said during a televised debate that he spends about 30 days in his Penn Hills house each year.".

Allegheny County Election Office records indicate that, while a registered voter in the county, Santorum had since 1995 voted absentee.

The only way for Santorum to not pay for his children's private education was to enroll them in the Penn Hills School District. Virginia state law only requires local school districts to pay for private school tuition fee when a student has disabilities and enrolls in a school that can satisfy his or her needs, according to Charles Pyle, Virginia Department of Education spokesman. Otherwise, children in Virginia must attend their local public schools.

Santorum's supporters have said that the controversy is politically motivated because the school board is controlled by Democrats (Erin Vecchio, the school board member who first publicly raised the issue, is the chair of the local Democratic Party). They also have said that since Santorum votes in Penn Hills and pays property and school taxes there, he is entitled to the same privileges as any other Penn Hills resident and should not be deprived of these privileges as a result of his service in the U.S. Senate. Non-residency issues have raised questions of hypocrisy, in that Santorum had previously castigated Representative Doug Walgren for moving away from his district.

Declaration regarding WMDs in Iraq

In June 2006, Santorum declared that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had been found in Iraq. The specific weapons he referred to were chemical munitions dating back to the Iran–Iraq War that were buried in the early 1990s. The report stated that while agents had degraded to an unknown degree, they remained dangerous and possibly lethal. Officials of the Department of Defense, CIA intelligence analysts, and the White House have all explicitly stated that these expired casings are not part of the WMDs threat that Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched to contain.

Santorum's declaration was based, in part, on declassified portions of a classified report from the National Ground Intelligence Center of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Portions were declassified in a summary that made six key points:

Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded or vacant mustard or sarin nerve agent casings.

Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre–Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled warheads are believed to still exist. They have no viable military capability, however.

Pre–Gulf War chemical munitions could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups could have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq.

The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectile casings.

The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, the residue could be hazardous upon dermal contact.

It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

Animal rights

In 2005 a coalition of animal rights groups, spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) mounted a failed effort to push the ''Pet Animal Welfare Statute of 2005'' (PAWS) through Congress. The bill was proposed by Senator Santorum and sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (then-R-PA). PAWS would have reclassified most small and hobby breeders as commercial breeders subjecting them to USDA regulations, allowed home inspections and placed fees and compliance expenses on pet breeders. Fellow Congressmen were told that PAWS was "the puppy mill bill". This was Santorum's third failed attempt at pet-related legislation.

ACLU suit

In 2005, four teenagers were ejected from a bookstore in Wilmington, Delaware, where Santorum was scheduled for a book signing, after they were overheard expressing critical opinions of the senator. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, which was settled in 2007. As a result of the settlement, the Delaware State Police were required to pay legal fees for the plaintiffs and provide training to officers on free speech rights. The Santorum staff members who requested the ejection were required to apologize and to relinquish their salaries for the event—$2,500.00—to plaintiffs in damages.

Other

As a key member of the Gang of Seven (a group of seven freshmen Republican Congressmen), Santorum helped expose a scandal at the House Bank. The Gang of Seven's reform-minded agenda is often cited as a foundation of the 1994 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

In 1996, as a U.S. senator, Santorum served as Chairman of the Republican Party Task Force on Welfare Reform.. The legislation that became the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 written by Florida congressman E. Clay Shaw, Jr., passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Though not a named author of the special Schiavo legislation, Santorum played a key role in shepherding the bill through the Senate to a vote on March 20, 2005. Santorum has frequently stated that he does not believe a "right to privacy" exists under the Constitution, even within marriage; he has been especially critical of the Supreme Court decision in ''Griswold v. Connecticut'' (1965), which held that the Constitution guaranteed the aforementioned right, and on that basis, overturned a law prohibiting the sale and use of contraceptives.

Santorum is also a supporter of partial privatization of Social Security. Since the 2004 presidential election, Santorum has held forums across Pennsylvania on the topic.

In 2005, Santorum sponsored the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which appropriated $10 million aimed at regime change in Iran. The Act passed with overwhelming support. However, Santorum nevertheless voted against the Lautenberg amendment which would have closed the loophole which allows companies like Halliburton to do business with Iran through their foreign affiliates.

In reference to the Iraq war in 2006, Santorum drew an analogy with ''The Lord of the Rings'' in one of his addresses:

Santorum informed senator John Ensign that Ensign's affair with a staff member was about to become publicly known.

2006 campaign

In 2006, Santorum sought re-election to a third term in the U.S. Senate. His Democratic opponent was State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., the son of popular former governor Robert Casey, Sr.(D) Santorum's seat was a prime target of Democratic efforts to gain Senate seats in the 2006 elections. Casey's candidacy was bolstered by his opposition to abortion, negating one of Santorum's key issues.

Republican strategists took as a bad omen Santorum's primary result in 2006, in which he ran unopposed for the Republican nomination. Republican gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann, also unopposed, garnered 22,000 more votes statewide than Santorum in the primary, meaning thousands of Republican voters abstained from endorsing Santorum for another Senate term. This may have been partly due to Santorum's support for Arlen Specter, over Congressman Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. Even though Santorum is only slightly less conservative than Toomey, he joined virtually all of the state and national Republican establishment in supporting the moderate Specter. This led many socially and fiscally conservative Republicans to consider Santorum's support of Specter to be a betrayal of their cause.

On May 22, 2006, the polling firm Rasmussen Reports declared that Santorum was the "most vulnerable incumbent" among the Senators running for re-election. However, in August 2006, polling showed Santorum with his highest approval rating in months, 48 percent, a twelve-point jump between July and August. Nearly as many Pennsylvanians, 45 percent, said they had an unfavorable view of the Senator.

For most of the campaign, Santorum was behind by 15 points or more. Most polls during the summer of 2006 showed the race between Casey and Santorum becoming increasingly competitive, but a poll released by Quinnipiac University on September 26 showed Casey's margin ballooning back to a double-digit lead.

One day before the Quinnipiac poll was released, a Pennsylvania state judge ruled against a potential third-party candidate, Carl Romanelli of the Green Party. Romanelli fell about 8,900 petition signatures shy of the threshold needed to be placed on the statewide ballot in November. On October 4, 2006, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court also rejected Romanelli's legal challenge. This was a potential blow to the Santorum campaign, as Romanelli was expected to siphon off some Casey voters.

There is also some question as to whether Romanelli and Pennsylvania's Green Party violated federal election laws when they accepted tens of thousands of dollars in donations from people also backing Santorum's campaign.

Santorum found himself mired in controversy over his residency. For many years, he has maintained a modest home in Penn Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he claims as his official residence. However, his family lived in the Virginia suburbs of Washington when the Senate was in session. Since this meant Santorum spent most of the year away from Pennsylvania, critics argued it was not unlike the living arrangements he denounced in his 1990 House race against Walgren. Santorum accused Walgren of being out of touch with his Pittsburgh-area district, symbolized by his home in the Virginia suburbs. On NBC's Meet the Press on September 3, 2006, Santorum admitted that he only spends "maybe a month a year, something like that" at his Pennsylvania residence.

Santorum also drew criticism for enrolling five of his six children in an online "cyber school" in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh and most of its suburbs), despite the fact the children lived in Virginia. The Penn Hills School District was billed $73,000 in tuition for the cyber classes.

At least one of Santorum's television ads called into question his campaign's use of the facts regarding Casey and persons who have donated money to the Casey campaign. According to the ad, some of the persons who have given Casey money are or have been under investigation for various crimes. An editorial in Casey's hometown newspaper, ''The Scranton Times-Tribune'', points out that all but one of the contributions "[was] made to Casey campaigns when he was running for other offices, at which time none of the contributors were known to be under investigation for anything." In fact, two of the persons cited in the Santorum campaign ad had actually given contributions to Mr. Santorum's 2006 Senate campaign. Another died in 2004. However, the Santorum campaign pointed out that the money the Santorum campaign received from those donors was not kept by the campaign, but rather donated to educational institutions.

A heated debate between the candidates occurred on October 11, 2006. There, according to coverage by ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', the candidates appeared "less statesmanlike than either Gov. Ed Rendell or challenger Lynn Swann, who had debated each other in Pittsburgh the [previous] week".

In late October, during the Lebanon County Republican Committee’s annual dinner at the Lantern Lodge, Santorum said "If we are not successful here and things don’t go right in the election, there’s a good chance that the course of our country could change." "We are in the equivalent of the late 1930s, and this election will decide whether we are going to continue to appease or whether we will stand and fight while we have a chance to win without devastating consequences."

Santorum on August 28 gave a speech to Pennsylvania media at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg (which he earlier gave to the National Club) claiming that terrorist attacks on America by "radical Islamists" were part of a more than three-century-old plot to restore Shia clerics to power and bring "the 12th Imam" out of hiding. He said, according to the online news service, Capitolwire: “They believe, as all Shias do, in the Hidden Imam, the 12th Imam," the 12th descendant in a straight line from Mohammed the Prophet, who disappeared in 874, at the age of 5. “The Shia believe that he is the Messiah and he is in hiding and that he will return. … They believe … he will return with radical Islam, when Shia dominates the world. Well, for over 1,000 years, ... the East and West fought, up until 1683 ... In 1683, not that long ago, the Islamists had surrounded the gates of Vienna and were on the verge of toppling it after a siege; ... but the West united, and led by the Poles, [King] John Sobieski and the Polish Hussars defeated [the Arab forces] in a one-day battle on the plains outside Vienna. “What was the high-water mark of this 1,000-year war? It was the day before. What was the date the day before? Sept. 11, 1683.”

This speech eventually led to Santorum launching a tour called "The Gathering Storm," comparing himself to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who alerted his nation and the world to the Nazi menace in the 1930s, and then fought with America, Russia and others to defeat the Germans, Italians and Japan in World War II in the 1940s. The Associated Press' Jennifer Yates wrote on Oct. 27 that Santorum said: "This is a moment, a critical crossroads in American history," as she noted that "Santorum, who invoked Winston Churchill's memoir – "The Gathering Storm" – about the causes of World War II" then told her and audiences: "The parallel is so profound."

Days before, Yates reported, Santorum said: Casey's election and that of other Democrats trying to take over the U.S. House and Senate would be "a disaster for the future of the world."

On the Sunday before the election, Casey responded to the comment, telling Capitolwire: "Who runs a campaign like that? No one believes terrorists are going to be more likely to attack us, because I defeat Rick Santorum. Does even he believe that?"

Santorum wrote that many women have disclosed to him that it is more "socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children.... What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else – or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon – find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism." Polls showed many female voters resented this description of why they worked, especially Republican and independent women whose abandonment of Santorum doomed his campaign, reported the online news service Capitolwire, based in Harrisburg. In a question-and-answer session on Aug. 28 at the Pennsylvania speech, Santorum tried again to address the issue and said his problem was that federal taxes now consumed 27 percent of family wages, and the second wage earner in most families made only 25 percent of the first's wages.

“First, I would say, read the book and I think if you read the book, you can answer the question yourself. Because anyone who has read the book instead of the comments pulled out by the Democratic National Committee about the book, which was four sentences, by the way, in a 430-page book, … would tell you I am supportive of families in a variety of different ways. ... What does the average second-earner in the family make? Twenty five percent of the first earner. ... Because of our tax code, we make it virtually impossible to maintain a standard of living and at the same time, be home with your children. ... Number two, look, I believe that women should have choices when it comes to the workforce. And they should be real choices. "And look, I came from a family where my mother worked, all her life, made more money than my dad (N.B.: his mother and father were a registered nurse and psychiatrist, respectively). I have more people working in my office who are women, in senior policy positions, than men. So I don’t have a hang-up with women working. I do have a hang-up with the government and others in society not nurturing, supporting and encouraging parents to be home with their kids when they need to be home. And I think we need to do more as a society to help them.”

In the November election, Santorum lost, with 41% of the vote to Casey's 59%, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator in Pennsylvania.

Post-Senate career

Before failing to win re-election in 2006, Santorum had frequently been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. Such speculation faded when, during the course of the campaign and in light of unimpressive poll numbers, he declared that, if re-elected, he would serve a full term. After he lost, Santorum once again ruled out a presidential run.

In March 2007 Santorum joined Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC, where he primarily practiced law in the firm's Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. offices providing business and strategic counseling services to the firm's clients. He also joined the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a D.C.-based conservative think tank. Santorum was also a contributor on the Fox News Channel. Santorum also writes an Op/Ed piece titled "The Elephant in the Room" for the Commentary Page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Santorum told the ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'' that he would address many geopolitical issues, and then joked, "I don't do Anna Nicole Smith, that's all." After leaving the Senate, Santorum joined the Board of Directors of Universal Health Services, a hospital management company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

On February 1, 2008, Santorum said he would vote for Mitt Romney in the 2008 Presidential Republican primary race, stating: "If you're a Republican, if you're a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now and that's Mitt Romney.". He has criticized John McCain, questioning his pro-life voting record and whether Sen. McCain holds true conservative values. In September 2008, Santorum expressed support for McCain, citing Sarah Palin as a step in the right direction: "Knowing McCain, he's choosing someone in whom he sees a lot of himself...He tries to find people who have a similar head as he does, and if he sees him in [Palin]...that gives me a better feel for him and a little more confidence in him." In 2011 he said McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war, did not understand how the "enhanced interrogation" process works.

On April 12, 2007, political action committee America's Foundation, Highmark and a former Highmark vice president were fined by the Federal Election Committee for sponsoring Santorum with corporate money. The problem had been reported by Highmark, which uncovered the matter during an internal review.

Santorum was mentioned as a candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2010. At one point, he was said to have "quietly but efficiently put his fingerprints on a wide-array of conservative causes in the state." However, Santorum declined to seek the gubernatorial nomination and instead endorsed eventual winner Tom Corbett.

2012 presidential campaign

In the fall of 2009, Santorum hinted that he was considering a run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election. On September 11, 2009, Santorum spoke to a group of Catholic leaders in Orlando, Florida and told them, "I hate to be calculating, but I see that 2012 is not just throwing somebody out to be eaten, but it's a real opportunity for success." He scheduled various appearances with political non-profit organizations that took place in Iowa.

Santorum repeated his consideration of a 2012 run in an e-mail and letter sent on January 15, 2010 to supporters of his political action committee, saying, "After talking it over with my wife Karen and our kids – I am considering putting my name in for the 2012 presidential race. I'm convinced that conservatives need a candidate who will not only stand up for our views, but who can articulate a conservative vision for our country's future," he wrote. "And right now, I just don't see anyone stepping up to the plate. I have no great burning desire to be president, but I have a burning desire to have a different president of the United States". He formed a presidential exploratory committee on April 13, 2011.

Santorum formally announced his run for the Republican presidential nomination on ABC's ''Good Morning America'' on June 6, 2011, saying he's "in it to win."

Works

References

External links

Rick Santorum ''official campaign site''

Column archives at ''Townhall.com''

;Articles

Excerpt from Santorum interview ''USA Today'', April 23, 2003

Lawsuit Abuse Critic Explains Suit ''ABC Primetime'', November 10, 2005

Editorial: Charities on the Hill ''Washington Post'', March 7, 2006

Santorum Against the World, Michael Dougherty, ''The American Conservative'', July 30, 2007

{{U.S. Senator box | before=Harris Wofford | state=Pennsylvania | class=1 | years=1995–2007 | alongside=Arlen Specter | after=Bob Casey, Jr.}}

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de:Rick Santorum es:Rick Santorum fr:Rick Santorum it:Rick Santorum la:Ricardus Iohannes Santorum nl:Rick Santorum ja:リック・サントラム pl:Rick Santorum ru:Санторум, Рик fi:Rick Santorum sv:Rick Santorum zh:里克·桑托勒姆

Name	Mitt Romney
Alt	Portrait of Mitt Romney
Order	70th
Office	Governor of Massachusetts
Term start	January 2, 2003
Term end	January 4, 2007
Lieutenant	Kerry Healey
Predecessor	Paul Cellucci (Governor)Jane Swift (acting)
Successor	Deval Patrick
Birth date	March 12, 1947
Birth place	Detroit, Michigan
Birthname	Willard Mitt Romney
Nationality	American
Party	Republican
Residence	Belmont, MassachusettsWolfeboro, New HampshireSan Diego, California
Spouse
Children	Tagg (b. 1970) Matt (b. 1971) Josh (b. 1975) Ben (b. 1978) Craig (b. 1981)
Alma mater	Brigham Young University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)Harvard Business School (M.B.A.)
Profession	Businessman, politician, author
Religion	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)
Signature	Mitt Romney Signature.svg }}

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Romney is the son of George W. Romney (the former Governor of Michigan) and Lenore Romney. He was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and then served as a Mormon missionary in France. He received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University, and thereafter earned Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration joint degrees from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Romney entered the management consulting business which led to a position at Bain & Company, eventually serving as its CEO to lead it out of crisis. He was also co-founder and head of the spin-off company Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm which became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation, and the wealth Romney accumulated there would help fund all of his future political campaigns. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts but lost to incumbent Ted Kennedy. Romney organized and steered the 2002 Winter Olympics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and helped turn the troubled Games into a financial success.

Romney won the election for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, but did not seek reelection in 2006. During his term, he presided over a series of spending cuts and increases in fees that eliminated a projected $3 billion deficit. He also signed into law the Massachusetts health care reform legislation, which provided near-universal health insurance access via subsidies and state-level mandates and was the first of its kind in the nation. During the course of his political career, his positions or rhetorical emphasis have shifted more towards American conservatism in several areas.

Romney ran for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, winning several caucus and primary contests, though he ultimately lost the nomination to John McCain. In the following years he published ''No Apology: The Case for American Greatness'' and gave speeches and raised campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans. On June 2, 2011, Romney announced that he would seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Political observers and public opinion polls place him as a front-runner in the race.

Early life

Romney was born in Detroit. He is the youngest child of George W. Romney, a man of humble upbringing who by 1948 had become an automobile executive, and Lenore Romney (née LaFount). His mother was a native of Logan, Utah and his father had been born in Mexico to American parents. The three siblings before him were Margo Lynn, Jane LaFount, and G. Scott, followed by Mitt after a gap of six years. Romney was named after hotel magnate J. Willard Marriott, his father's best friend, and his father's cousin Milton "Mitt" Romney, 1925–1929 quarterback for the Chicago Bears.|group="nb"}}

When he was five, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills. His father became CEO of American Motors and turned the company around from the brink of bankruptcy; by the time he was twelve, his father had become a nationally known figure in print and on television. Romney idolozed his father, read automotive trade magazines, kept abreast of automotive developments, and aspired to be an executive in the industry himself one day. His father also presided over the Detroit Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which the family belonged. Romney went to public elementary schools and then from seventh grade on, attended Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, a private boys preparatory school of the classic mold where he was the lone Mormon and where many students came from even more privileged backgrounds. He was not particularly athletic and at first did not excel at academics. While a sophomore, he participated in the campaign in which his father was elected Governor of Michigan. George Romney was re-elected twice; Mitt worked for him as an intern in the governor's office, and was present at the 1964 Republican National Convention when his moderate father battled conservative party nominee Barry Goldwater over issues of civil rights and ideological extremism. Romney had a steady set of chores and worked summer jobs, including being a security guard at a Chrysler plant.

Initially a manager for the ice hockey team and a pep squad member, during his final year at Cranbook, Romney joined the cross country running team and improved academically, but was still not a star pupil. His social skills were strong, however, and he won an award for those "whose contributions to school life are often not fully recognized through already existing channels." Romney was an energetic child who enjoyed pranks.|group="nb"}} In March of his senior year, he began dating Ann Davies, two years behind him, whom he had once known in elementary school; she attended the private Kingswood School, the sister school to Cranbrook. The two informally agreed to marriage around the time of his June 1965 graduation.

Experiences from 1965 to 1975

Romney attended Stanford University for a year. Although the campus was becoming radicalized with the beginnings of 1960s social and political movements, he kept a well-groomed appearance and enjoyed traditional campus events. In May 1966, he was part of a counter-protest against a group staging a sit-in in the university administration building in opposition to draft status tests.

In July 1966, Romney left for 30 months in France as a Mormon missionary, a traditional duty that his father and other relatives had done. He arrived in Le Havre with ideas about how to change and promote the French Mission, while facing physical and economic deprivation in their cramped quarters. Rules against drinking, smoking, and dating were strictly enforced. Like most Mormon missionaries, he did not gain many converts, with the nominally Catholic but secular, wine-loving French people proving especially resistant to a religion that prohibits alcohol. He became demoralized, and later recalled it as the only time when "most of what I was trying to do was rejected." In Nantes, Romney was bruised defending two female missionaries against a horde of local rugby players. He continued to work hard; having grown up in Michigan rather than the more insular Utah world, Romney was better able to interact with the French. He was promoted to zone leader in Bordeaux in early 1968 and subsequently became assistant to the mission president in Paris, the highest position for a missionary. Romney's support for the U.S. role in the Vietnam War were only reinforced when the French greeted him with hostility over the matter and he debated them in return. He also witnessed the May 1968 general strike and student uprisings.

In June 1968, an automobile Romney was driving in southern France was hit by another vehicle, seriously injuring him and killing one of his passengers, the wife of the mission president. As they drove through the village of Bernos-Beaulac, a Mercedes that was passing a truck missed a curve and suddenly swerved into the opposite lane and hit the Citroën DS Romney was driving in a head-on collision. Trapped between the steering wheel and door, the unconscious and seriously injured Romney had to be pried from the car; a French police officer mistakenly wrote ''Il est mort'' in his passport. The wife of the mission president was killed and other passengers were seriously injured as well. George Romney relied on his friend Sargent Shriver, the U.S. Ambassador to France, to go to the local hospital and discover that Mitt had survived. The fault for the accident was attributed completely to the driver of the other vehicle. Romney had suffered broken ribs, a fractured arm, a concussion, and facial injuries, but recovered quickly without needing surgery.|name="nb-acc"|group="nb"}} Fault for the accident was attributed completely to the other driver. After recovering, Romney became co-acting president of a mission demoralized and disorganized by the May civil disturbances and the car accident. Romney rallied and motivated the others and they met an ambitious goal of 200 baptisms for the year, the most for the mission in a decade. By the end of his stint in December 1968, Romney was overseeing the work of 175 fellow members. The experience in France changed Romney. It showed him the fragility of life and the need for a seriousness of purpose, and he gained a capacity for organization and a record of success that he had theretofore lacked. It also represented a crucible, after having been only a half-hearted Mormon growing up: "On a mission, your faith in Jesus Christ either evaporates or it becomes much deeper. For me it became much deeper."

While he was away, Ann Davies had converted to the LDS Church, guided by George Romney, and had begun attending Brigham Young University. Mitt was nervous that she had been wooed by others while he was away, and indeed she had dated others, but at their first meeting following his return they reconnected and agreed to quickly get married. That happened on March 21, 1969, in a Bloomfield Hills civil ceremony presided over by a church elder; the following day the couple flew to Utah for a wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple.

Romney began attending Brigham Young too. He had missed much of the tumultuous American anti-Vietnam War movement while away, and was surprised to learn that his father had turned against the war during his ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign. Regarding the military draft, Romney had initially gotten a student deferment, then like most other Mormon missionaries had received a ministerial deferment while in France, then got another student deferment. When those ran out, his high number in the December 1969 draft lottery (300) meant he would not be selected.

At culturally conservative Brigham Young, Romney continued to be separated from much of the upheaval of the era, and did not join the few protests against the war or the LDS Church's policy against giving full membership to blacks. He became president and successful fundraiser for the all-male Cougar Club and showed a new-found discipline in his studies. In his senior year he took leave to work as driver and advance man for his mother Lenore Romney's eventually unsuccessful 1970 campaign for U.S. Senator from Michigan. He graduated from Brigham Young in 1971, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English and giving commencement addresses to both his own College of Humanities and to the whole university.

The Romneys' first son, Tagg, was born in 1970 while both were undergraduates at Brigham Young and living in a basement apartment. They subsequently welcomed Matt (1971), Josh (1975), Ben (1978), and Craig (1981). Ann Romney's work as a stay-at-home mom would enable her husband to pursue his career.

Romney still wanted to pursue a business path, but his father, by now serving in President Richard Nixon's cabinet as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, advised that a law degree would be valuable. Thus Romney became one of only 15 students to enroll at the recently created joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Fellow students noted Romney's strong work ethic and buttoned-down appearance; he lived in a Belmont, Massachusetts house with Ann and by now two children. He graduated in 1975 ''cum laude'' from the law school, in the top third of that class, and was named a Baker Scholar for graduating in the top five percent of his business school class.

Business career

Romney was heavily recruited and, after graduation, chose to remain in Massachusetts and go to work for Boston Consulting Group (BCG), thinking that working as a management consultant to a variety of companies would prepare him for a future job as a chief executive. | author=Heinlein, Gary | newspaper=The Detroit News | date=February 14, 2007}} but never worked as a lawyer. |group="nb"}} Romney's legal and business education proved valuable in this role, and he quickly became a rising star while applying BCG principles such as the growth-share matrix.

In 1977, he was hired away by Bain & Company, a management consulting firm in Boston that had been formed a few years earlier by Bill Bain and other former BCG employees. Bain would later say of the thirty-year-old Romney, "He had the appearance of confidence of a guy who was maybe ten years older." With Bain & Company, Romney proved adept at learning the "Bain way", which consisted of immersing itself in each client's business, and not simply to issue recommendations, but to stay with the company until they were effectively changed for the better. With a record of success with clients such as the Monsanto Company, Outboard Marine Corporation, Burlington Industries, and Corning Incorporated, Romney became a vice president of the firm in 1978 and within a few years one of its best consultants. Romney became a firm believer in Bain's methods; he later said, "The idea that consultancies should not measure themselves by the thickness of their reports, or even the elegance of their writing, but rather by whether or not the report was effectively implemented was an inflection point in the history of consulting."

thumb|right|Logo of company that Romney co-foundedRomney was restless for a company of his own to run, and in 1983 Bill Bain offered him the chance to head a new venture that would buy into companies, have them benefit from Bain techniques, and then reap higher rewards than just consulting fees. Romney was initially cautious about accepting the offer, and Bain re-arranged the terms in a complicated partnership structure so that there was no financial or professional risk to Romney. Thus, in 1984, Romney left Bain & Company to co-found the spin-off private equity investment firm, Bain Capital. Bain and Romney spent a year raising the $37 million in investment money needed to start the new operation, which had fewer than ten employees. As general partner of the new firm, Romney was frugal and cautious, spending little on office appearance and finding the weak spots in so many potential deals that by 1986, very few had been done. At first, Bain Capital focused on venture capital opportunities. Their first big success came with a 1986 investment to help start Staples Inc., after founder Thomas G. Stemberg convinced Romney of the market size for office supplies; Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade.

Romney soon switched Bain Capital's focus from startups to the relatively new business of leveraged buyouts: buying existing firms with money mostly borrowed against their assets, partnering with existing management to apply the "Bain way" to their operations (rather than the hostile takeovers practiced in other leverage buyout scenarios), and then selling them off in a few years. Bain Capital lost most of its money in many of its early leveraged buyouts, but then started finding successes with spectacular returns. Indeed, during the 14 years Romney headed the company, Bain Capital's average annual internal rate of return on realized investments was 113 percent. Romney excelled at presenting and selling the deals the company made. The firm initially gave a cut of its profits to Bain & Company, but Romney later persuaded Bain to give that up.

The firm successfully invested in or acquired many well-known companies such as Accuride, Brookstone, Domino's Pizza, Sealy Corporation, Sports Authority, and Artisan Entertainment, as well as lesser-known companies in the industrial and medical sectors. Romney's cautious instincts were still in force at times; he wanted to drop a Bain Capital hedge fund that initially lost money, but other partners prevailed and it eventually gained billions. He also personally opted out of the Artisan Entertainment deal, not wanting to profit from a studio that produced R-rated films. Romney was on the board of directors of Damon Corporation, a medical testing company later found guilty of defrauding the government; Bain Capital tripled its investment before selling off the company, with the fraud being discovered by the new owners (Romney was never implicated). In some cases Romney had little involvement with a company once acquired.

Bain Capital's leveraged buyouts sometimes led to layoffs, either soon after acquisition or later after the firm had left. Bain Capital officials later said that overall, more jobs were added than lost due to these buyouts. In any case, maximizing the value of acquired companies and the return to Bain's investors, not job creation, was the firm's fundamental goal, as it was for most private equity operations. Regarding job losses, Romney later said, "Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter but it is necessary to save the life of the patient. My job was to try and make the enterprise successful, and in my view the best security a family can have is that the business they work for is strong." Bain Capital's acquisition of Ampad exemplified a deal where it profited handsomely from early payments and management fees, even though the subject company itself ended up going into bankruptcy. Bain was among the private equity firms that took the most such fees, and more cases happened as Romney was leaving the firm. He said in retrospect, "It is one thing that if I had a chance to go back I would be more sensitive to. It is always a balance. Great care has got to be taken not to take a dividend or a distribution from a company that puts that company at risk. [Having taken a big payment from a company that later failed] would make me sick, sick at heart."

In 1990, Romney was asked to return to Bain & Company, which was facing financial collapse. He was announced as its new CEO in January 1991 (but drew only a symbolic salary of one dollar). Romney managed an effort to restructure the firm's employee stock-ownership plan, real-estate deals and bank loans, while rallying the firm's thousand employees, imposing a new governing structure that included Bain and the other founding partners giving up control, and increasing fiscal transparency. Within about a year, he had led Bain & Company through a highly successful turnaround and returned the firm to profitability without further layoffs or partner defections. He turned Bain & Company over to new leadership and returned to Bain Capital in December 1992.

During his years in business, Romney tithed by giving millions of dollars to the LDS Church. He served as ward bishop for Belmont from 1984 to 1986, acting as the ecclesiastical and administrative head of his congregation. From 1986 to 1994 he presided over the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen congregations in eastern Massachusetts.

Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to serve as the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee. By that time, Bain Capital was on its way to being one of the top private equity firms in the nation, having increased its number of partners from 5 to 18, having 115 employees overall, and having $4 billion under its management. Bain Capital's approach of applying consulting expertise to the companies it invested in became widely copied within the private equity industry. His experience at Bain & Company and Bain Capital gave Romney a business-oriented world view – centering around a hate of waste and inefficiency, a love for data and charts and analysis and presentation, and a belief in keeping an open mind and seeking opposing points of view – that he would take with him to the public sector. As a result of his business career, by 2007 Romney and his wife had a net worth of between $190 and $250 million, most of it held in blind trusts. Although gone, Romney received a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities. An additional blind trust existed in the name of the Romneys' children and grandchildren that was valued at between $70 and $100 million as of 2007. The couple's net worth remained in the same range as of 2011, and was still held in blind trusts.

1994 U.S. senatorial campaign

Romney had been thinking about entering politics for a while. He decided to take on longtime incumbent Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, who was more vulnerable than usual in 1994 – in part because of the unpopularity of the Democratic Congress as a whole and also because this was Kennedy's first election since the William Kennedy Smith trial in Florida, in which Kennedy had taken some public relations hits regarding his character. Romney changed his affiliation from Independent to Republican in October 1993 and formally announced his candidacy in February 1994. He stepped down from his position at Bain Capital during the run.

Romney came from behind to win the Massachusetts Republican Party's nomination for U.S. Senate after buying substantial television time to get out his message, gaining overwhelming support in the state party convention, and then defeating businessman John Lakian in the September 1994 primary with over 80 percent of the vote. In the general election, Kennedy faced the first serious re-election challenger of his career in the young, telegenic, and very well-funded Romney. Romney ran as a fresh face, as a successful entrepreneur who stated he had created ten thousand jobs, and as a Washington outsider with a strong family image and moderate stands on social issues. Romney stated: "Ultimately, this is a campaign about change." After two decades out of public view, his father George re-emerged during the campaign as well.

Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, but had trouble establishing its own positions in a consistent manner. By mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even. Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused both on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on the treatment of workers at a paper products plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital. Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late October debate without a clear winner, but by then Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead afterward. Romney spent over $7 million of his own money, with Kennedy spending more than $10 million from his campaign fund, mostly in the last weeks of the campaign (this was the second-most expensive race of the 1994 election cycle, after the Dianne Feinstein–Michael Huffington Senate race in California).

In the November general election, despite a disastrous showing for Democrats overall, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, the smallest margin in Kennedy's eight re-election campaigns for the Senate.

2002 Winter Olympics

Romney returned to Bain Capital the day after the election, but still smarted from the loss, and told his brother, "I never want to run for something again unless I can win." His father died in 1995 and his mother in 1998, and Romney felt restless as the decade neared a close; the goal of just making more money was losing its appeal to him. He had stepped down as Boston Stake president in order to run for the Senate, and while still teaching Sunday School, was largely uninvolved in the long and somewhat controversial construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont. Ann Romney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998; Romney described watching her fail a series of neurological tests as the worst day of his life. After two years of severe difficulties with the disease, she found in Park City, Utah (where the couple had built a vacation home) a mixture of mainstream, alternative, and equestrian therapies that gave her a lifestyle mostly without limitations. When the offer came for Romney to take over the troubled 2002 Olympic Winter Games, to be held in Salt Lake City in Utah, she urged him to take it, and eager for a new challenge, he did. On February 11, 1999, Romney was hired as the new president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

Before Romney came on, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. Plans were being made to scale back the games to compensate for the fiscal crisis and there were fears the games might be moved away entirely. The Games had also been damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials, including prior Salt Lake Olympic Committee president and CEO Frank Joklik. Joklik and committee vice president Dave Johnson were forced to resign. Romney's appointment faced some initial criticism from non-Mormons, and fears from Mormons, that it represented cronyism or gave the games too Mormon an image.

Romney revamped the organization's leadership and policies, reduced budgets, and boosted fund raising. He soothed worried corporate sponsors and recruited many new ones. He admitted past problems, listened to local critics, and rallied Utah's citizenry with a sense of optimism. Romney worked to ensure the safety of the Games following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by ignoring those who suggested the games be called off and coordinating a $300 million security budget. He became the public face of the Olympic effort, appearing in countless photographs and news stories and even on Olympics souvenir pins. Romney's omnipresence irked those who thought he was taking too much of the credit for the success, or had exaggerated the state of initial distress, or was primarily looking to improve his own image. Overall he oversaw a $1.32 billion budget, 700 employees, and 26,000 volunteers.

Despite the initial fiscal shortfall, the Games ended up clearing a profit of $100 million, not counting the $224.5 million in security costs contributed by outside sources. Romney broke the record for most private money raised by any individual for an Olympics games, summer or winter. His performance as Olympics head was rated positively by 87 percent of Utahns. Romney and his wife contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and he donated to charity the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO.

Romney was widely praised for his successful efforts with the 2002 Winter Olympics including by President George W. Bush, and it solidified his reputation as a turnaround artist. Harvard Business School taught a case study based around Romney's successful actions. Romney wrote a book about his experience titled ''Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games'', published in 2004. The role gave Romney experience in dealing with federal, state, and local entities, a public persona he had previously lacked, and the chance to re-launch his political aspirations. Indeed, he was mentioned as a possible candidate for statewide office in both Massachusetts and Utah, and also as possibly joining the Bush administration.

Governor of Massachusetts

2002 gubernatorial campaign

In 2002, Republican Acting Governor Jane Swift's administration was plagued by political missteps and personal scandals. Many Republicans viewed her as a liability and considered her unable to win a general election against a Democrat. Prominent GOP activists campaigned to persuade Romney to run for governor. One poll taken at that time showed Republicans favoring Romney over Swift by more than 50 percentage points. In March 2002, Swift decided not to seek her party's nomination, and so Romney was unopposed in the Republican party primary.

Massachusetts Democratic Party officials contested Romney's eligibility to run for governor, citing residency issues involving Romney's time in Utah as president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee. In June 2002, the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission unanimously ruled that Romney was eligible to run for office.

Romney ran as a political outsider again. Supporters of Romney hailed his business record, especially his success with the 2002 Olympics, as the record of someone who would be able to bring a new era of efficiency into Massachusetts politics. The campaign was the first to use microtargeting techniques, in which fine-grained groups of voters were reached with narrowly tailored messaging. Romney contributed over $6 million to his own campaign during the election, a state record at the time. Romney was elected Governor in November 2002 with 50 percent of the vote over his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, who received 45 percent.

Tenure, 2003–2007

Romney was sworn in as the 70th governor of Massachusetts on January 2, 2003. Both houses of the Massachusetts state legislature held large Democratic majorities. He picked his cabinet and advisors more on managerial abilities than partisan affiliation. Upon entering office in the middle of a fiscal year, Romney faced an immediate $650 million shortfall and a projected $3 billion deficit for the next year. Unexpected revenue of $1.0–1.3 billion from a previously enacted capital gains tax increase and $500 million in unanticipated federal grants decreased the deficit to $1.2–1.5 billion. Through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and removal of corporate tax loopholes, by 2006 the state had a $600–700 million surplus.

thumb|left|upright|alt=Mitt Romney resting on a wooden desk, flanked by an American flag, a picture of his wife, a lamp, and a painting of mountains|Official Massachusetts State House portrait of Governor Mitt Romney, by artist [[Richard Whitney (artist)|Richard Whitney]]Romney supported raising various fees by more than $300 million, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses. Romney increased a special gasoline retailer fee by 2 cents per gallon, generating about $60 million per year in additional revenue. (Opponents said the reliance on fees sometimes imposed a hardship on those who could least afford them.) Romney also closed tax loopholes that brought in another $181 million from businesses over the next two years. The state legislature, with Romney's support, also cut spending by $1.6 billion, including $700 million in reductions in state aid to cities and towns. The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition by 63 percent over four years. Romney sought additional cuts in his last year as Massachusetts governor by vetoing nearly 250 items in the state budget, but all of them were overridden by the Democratic-dominated legislature.

The cuts in state spending put added pressure on local property taxes; the share of town and city revenues coming from property taxes rose from 49 percent to 53 percent. The combined state and local tax burden in Massachusetts increased during Romney's governorship but still was below the national average. According to the Tax Foundation, that per capita burden was 9.8 percent in 2002 (below the national average of 10.3 percent), and 10.5 percent in 2006 (below the national average of 10.8 percent).

Romney was at the forefront of a movement to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state, after a business executive told him at the start of his term that doing so would be the best way he could help people and after the federal government, due to the rules of Medicaid funding, threatened to cut $385 million in those payments to Massachusetts if the state did not reduce the number of uninsured recipients of health care services. Despite not having campaigned on the idea of universal health insurance, Romney decided that because people without insurance still received expensive health care, the money spent by the state for such care could be better used to subsidize insurance for the poor.

After positing that any measure adopted not raise taxes and not resemble the previous decade's failed "Hillarycare" proposal, Romney formed a team of consultants from different political backgrounds that beginning in late 2004 came up with a set of innovative proposals more ambitious than an incremental one from the Massachusetts Senate and more acceptable to him than one from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that incorporated a new payroll tax. In particular, Romney successfully pushed for incorporating an individual mandate at the state level. Past rival Ted Kennedy, who had made universal heath coverage his life's work and who over time developed a warm relationship with Romney, gave Romney's plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to work with it. The effort eventually gained the support of all major stakeholders within the state, and Romney helped break a logjam between rival Democratic leaders in the legislature.

On April 12, 2006, Romney signed the resulting Massachusetts health reform law, which requires nearly all Massachusetts residents to buy health insurance coverage or face escalating tax penalties such as the loss of their personal income tax exemption. The bill also establishes means-tested state subsidies for people who do not have adequate employer insurance and who make below an income threshold, by using funds previously designated to compensate for the health costs of the uninsured. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance and provisions guaranteeing dental benefits to Medicaid recipients. The legislature overrode all eight vetoes; Romney's communications director Eric Fehrnstrom responded by saying, "These differences with the Legislature are not essential to the goal of getting everyone covered with insurance." Romney said of the measure overall, "There really wasn't Republican or Democrat in this. People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It's liberal in the sense that we're getting our citizens health insurance. It's conservative in that we're not getting a government takeover." The law was the first of its kind in the nation and became the signature achievement of Romney's term in office.|group="nb"}}

At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits. Faced with the dilemma of choosing between same-sex marriage or civil unions after the November 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages (''Goodridge v. Department of Public Health''), Romney reluctantly backed a state constitutional amendment in February 2004 that would have banned same-sex marriage but still allow civil unions, viewing it as the only feasible way to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. In May 2004 Romney instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but citing a 1913 law that barred out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home state, no marriage licenses were to be issued to out-of-state same-sex couples not planning to move to Massachusetts. In June 2005, Romney abandoned his support for the compromise amendment, stating that the amendment confused voters who oppose both same-sex marriage and civil unions. Instead, Romney endorsed a petition effort led by the Coalition for Marriage & Family that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions. In 2004 and 2006 he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

In 2005, Romney revealed a change of view regarding abortion, moving from an "unequivocal" pro-choice position expressed during his 2002 campaign to a pro-life one where he opposed ''Roe v. Wade''. He vetoed a bill on pro-life grounds that would expand access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies.

Romney generally used the bully pulpit approach towards promoting his agenda, staging well-organized media events to appeal directly to the public rather than pushing his proposals in behind-doors sessions with the state legislature. Romney was especially effective in dealing with a crisis of confidence in Boston's Big Dig project following a fatal ceiling collapse in 2006, wresting control of the project from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and helping ensure that it would eventually complete.

During 2004, Romney spent considerable effort trying to bolster the state Republican Party, but it failed to gain any seats in the state legislative elections that year. Given a prime-time appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, Romney was already being discussed as a potential 2008 presidential candidate. Midway through his term, Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president, and on December 14, 2005, Romney announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as governor. As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network; he spent part or all of more than 200 days out of state during 2006, preparing for his run. Romney's frequent out-of-state travel contributed towards his approval rating declining in public polls towards the end of his term. He conceded that 2006 would be a difficult year for Republicans and that they would likely lose gubernatorial seats, including possibly his own. The weak condition of the Republican state party was one of several factors that led to Democrat Deval Patrick's lopsided win over Republican Kerry Healey in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election.

Romney filed to register a presidential campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission on his penultimate day in office as governor. Romney's term ended January 4, 2007.

2008 presidential campaign

Romney formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president on February 13, 2007, at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In his speech, Romney frequently invoked his father and his own family and stressed experiences in the private, public, and voluntary sectors that had brought him to this point. He said, "Throughout my life, I have pursued innovation and transformation," and casting himself as a political outsider, said, "I do not believe Washington can be transformed from within by a lifelong politician."

thumb|left|alt=Mitt Romney addressing an audience from atop a stage|Romney holding an "Ask Mitt Anything" session in [[Ames, Iowa|Ames, Iowa, in May 2007]]The assets that Romney's campaign began with included his résumé of success in the business world and his rescuing of the Salt Lake Olympics, which matched the commonly held notion that American industry had star players who could straighten out what was wrong in the nation's capital. Romney also had solid political experience as governor together with a political pedigree courtesy of his father, a strong work ethic and energy level, and a large, wholesome-looking family that seemed so perfect as to be off-putting to some voters. Ann Romney, who had become an outspoken advocate for those with multiple sclerosis, was in remission and would be an active participant in his campaign, helping to soften his political personality. Moreover, with his square jaw, handsome face, and ample hair graying at the temples, Mitt Romney matched one of the common images of what a president should look like. Romney's liabilities included having run for senator and served as governor in one of the nation's most liberal states, having taken some positions there that were opposed by the party's conservative base, and subsequently shifting those positions. The candidate's Mormon religion was also viewed with suspicion and skepticism by some in the Evangelical portion of the party.

Romney assembled for his campaign a veteran group of Republican staffers, consultants, and pollsters. He was little-known nationally, though, and stayed around the 10 percent range in Republican preference polls for the first half of 2007. Romney's strategy was to win the first two big contests, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and carry the momentum and visibility gained through the big Super Tuesday primaries and on to the nomination. He proved the most effective fundraiser of any of the Republican candidates, with his Olympics ties helping him with fundraising from Utah residents and from sponsors and trustees of the games. He also partly financed his campaign with his own personal fortune. These resources, combined with his August 2007 win in the Iowa Straw Poll and the mid-year near-collapse of nominal front-runner John McCain's campaign, made Romney a threat to win the nomination and the focus of the other candidates' attacks. Romney's staff suffered from internal strife and the candidate himself was indecisive at times, constantly asking for more data before making a decision. Persistent questions about the role of religion in Romney's life, as well as Southern Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls based upon an explicitly Christian-themed campaign, led to the December 6, 2007, "Faith in America" speech.

thumb|upright|right|alt=Mitt and Ann Romney standing side by side against an American flag|Mitt and Ann Romney in late December 2007 at a campaign event in Londonderry, New HampshireIn the January 3, 2008, Iowa Republican caucuses, the first contest of the primary season, Romney received 25 percent of the vote and placed second to the vastly outspent Huckabee, who received 34 percent. Of the 60 percent of caucus-goers who were evangelical Christians, Huckabee was supported by about half of them while Romney by only a fifth. A couple of days later, Romney won the lightly contested Wyoming Republican caucuses. At a Saint Anselm College debate, Huckabee and McCain pounded away at Romney's image as a flip flopper. Indeed, this label would stick to Romney through the campaign (but was one that Romney rejected as unfair and inaccurate, except for his acknowledged change of mind on abortion). Romney seemed to approach the campaign as a management consulting exercise, and showed a lack of personal warmth and political feel; journalist Evan Thomas wrote that Romney "came off as a phony, even when he was perfectly sincere." Romney's staff would conclude that competing as a candidate of social conservatism and ideological purity rather than of pragmatic competence had been a mistake.

Romney finished in second place by five percentage points to the resurgent McCain in the next-door-to-his-home-state New Hampshire primary on January 8. Romney rebounded to win the January 15 Michigan primary over McCain by a solid margin, capitalizing on his childhood ties to the state and his vow to bring back lost automotive industry jobs which was seen by several commentators as unrealistic.|group="nb"}} On January 19, Romney won the lightly contested Nevada caucuses, but placed fourth in the intense South Carolina primary, where he had effectively ceded the contest to his rivals. McCain gained further momentum with his win in South Carolina, leading to a showdown between him and Romney in the Florida primary.

thumb|left|alt=Mitt Romney surrounded by people, holding a microphone and smiling|Romney at a rally in Michigan in mid-January 2008For ten days, Romney campaigned intensively on economic issues and the burgeoning subprime mortgage crisis, while McCain repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Romney favored a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.|group="nb"}} McCain won key last-minute endorsements from Florida Senator Mel Martinez and Governor Charlie Crist, which helped push him to a five percentage point victory on January 29. Although many Republican officials were now lining up behind McCain, Romney persisted through the nationwide Super Tuesday contests on February 5. There he won primaries or caucuses in several states, including Massachusetts, Alaska, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah, but McCain won more, including large states such as California and New York. Trailing McCain in delegates by a more than two-to-one margin, Romney announced the end of his campaign on February 7 during a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Altogether, Romney had won 11 primaries and caucuses, received about 4.7 million total votes, and garnered about 280 delegates.

Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later. He soon founded the Free and Strong America PAC, a political action committee whose stated mission was to raise money for other Republican candidates and to promote Republican policies. Romney became one of the McCain campaign's most visible surrogates, appearing on behalf of the GOP nominee at fundraisers, state Republican party conventions, and on cable news programs. His efforts earned McCain's respect and the two developed a warmer relationship; he was on the nominee's short list for the vice presidential running mate slot, where his experience in matters economic would have balanced one of McCain's weaknesses. McCain, behind in the polls, opted instead for a high-risk, high-reward "game changer" and selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Romney continued to work for McCain's eventually unsuccessful general election campaign.

Between presidential campaigns

Following the election, Romney paved the way for a possible 2012 presidential campaign by keeping much of his PAC's money to pay for salaries and consulting fees for his existing political staff and to build up a political infrastructure for what might become a $1 billion campaign three years hence. He also had a network of former staff and supporters around the nation who were eager for him to run again. He continued to give speeches and raise campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans, but turned down many potential media appearances so as not to become overexposed. He earned over $374,000 in fees for speeches before business, educational, and motivational groups. He served on the board of directors of Marriott International in 2010, earning over $113,000, then stepped down from it in early 2011.

The Romneys sold their main home in Belmont and their ski house in Utah, leaving them an estate along Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and an oceanfront home in the La Jolla district of San Diego, California, that they had bought the year before. Both locations were near some of the Romneys' grandchildren, who by 2010 numbered fourteen. The San Diego location was also ideal for Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis therapies and for recovering from her late 2008 diagnosis and lumpectomy for mammary ductal carcinoma in situ. Romney maintained his voting registration in Massachusetts, however, and bought a smaller condominium in Belmont during 2010. Following the August 2009 death of his past rival and sometime ally Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Romney declared that he had no interest in running in the special January 2010 election to replace him. Romney was an early supporter of Scott Brown, the successful Republican candidate in that race. Some of Romney's former aides were used by Brown's campaign and Romney raised funds for Brown. In February 2010, Romney had a minor altercation with LMFAO musical group member Skyler Gordy, known as Sky Blu, on an airplane flight.

Romney's book, ''No Apology: The Case for American Greatness'', was released on March 2, 2010; an 18-state promotional book tour was undertaken. The book, which debuted atop the New York Times Best Seller list, avoided anecdotes about Romney's personal or political life and focused much of its attention on a presentation of his views on economic and geopolitical matters. Earnings from the book were donated to charity.

Polls of various kinds showed Romney remaining in the forefront of possible 2012 presidential contenders. In nationwide opinion polling for the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries, he has often led polls or been in the top three along with Palin and Huckabee. He finished first in the CPAC straw poll in 2009 and second in 2010 and 2011 behind Ron Paul, won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll in 2010, and won the New Hampshire Straw Poll in 2011. A January 2010 ''National Journal'' poll of political insiders found that a majority of Republican insiders, and a plurality of Democratic insiders, predicted Romney would become the party's 2012 nominee. Pew Research Center and Gallup Poll results showed that during 2009 and 2010, more in the general public were viewing him favorably (36 to 40 percent) than unfavorably (28 to 29 percent); this was a marked improvement from the days of his 2008 presidential campaign, when the reverse had been true.

Romney campaigned heavily for Republican candidates around the nation in the 2010 midterm elections, and raised the most funds of any of the prospective 2012 Republican presidential candidates. Appearances during early 2011 found Romney emphasizing how his experience could be applied towards solving the nation's economic problems and presenting a more relaxed visual image.

2012 presidential campaign

On April 11, 2011, Romney announced in a video taped outdoors at the University of New Hampshire that he had formed an exploratory committee as a first step for a potential run for the Republican presidential nomination, saying "It is time that we put America back on a course of greatness, with a growing economy, good jobs and fiscal discipline in Washington." The announcement represented the culmination of Romney's activities; as one Quinnipiac University political science professor stated, "We all knew that he was going to run. He's really been running for president ever since the day after the 2008 election."

Romney stood to possibly gain from the Republican electorate's tendency to nominate candidates who had previously run for president and were "next in line" to be chosen. Perhaps his greatest hurdle in gaining the Republican nomination was opposition to the Massachusetts health care reform law that he had signed five years earlier. The early stages of the race found Romney as the apparent front-runner in a weak field, especially in terms of fundraising prowess and organization. As many potential Republican candidates decided not to run (including Mike Pence, John Thune, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, and Mitch Daniels), Republican party figures searched for plausible alternatives to Romney.

On June 2, 2011, Romney formally announced the start of his campaign. Speaking on a farm in Stratham, New Hampshire, he stressed economic issues and said that the nation was suffering from "President Obama's own misery index". He said that, "In the campaign to come, the American ideals of economic freedom and opportunity need a clear and unapologetic defense, and I intend to make it – because I have lived it."

Romney took the early fundraising lead, raising four times more in the second quarter of 2011 than his nearest Republican opponent. He ran a low-key, low-profile campaign at first and avoided statements about the ongoing U.S. debt ceiling crisis until the final days, when he said he opposed the Budget Control Act of 2011 that resolved it.

Political positions

For much of his business career, Romney had no tangible record of political positions taken. He followed national politics avidly in college, and the circumstances of his father's presidential campaign loss would grate on him for decades, but his early philosophical influences were often non-political, such as in his missionary days when he read and absorbed Napoleon Hill's pioneering self-help tome ''Think and Grow Rich'' and encouraged his colleagues to do the same. Until his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign, he was registered as an Independent. In the 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries, he had voted for the Democratic former senator from the state, Paul Tsongas.

In the 1994 Senate race, Romney explicitly aligned himself with Republican Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who believed in fiscal conservatism and supported abortion rights and gay rights, saying "I think Bill Weld's fiscal conservatism, his focus on creating jobs and employment and his efforts to fight discrimination and assure civil rights for all is a model that I identify with and aspire to."

As a gubernatorial candidate, and then as the newly elected Governor of Massachusetts, Romney again generally operated in the mold established by Weld and followed by Weld's two other Republican successors, Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift: restrain spending and taxing, be tolerant or permissive on social issues, protect the environment, be tough on crime, try to appear post-partisan.

Romney has been consistent in many of his political positions. However, Romney's position or choice of emphasis on certain social issues, including abortion, some aspects of gay rights,|group="nb"}} some aspects of stem cell research,|group="nb"}} and some aspects of abstinence-only sex education,|group="nb"}} evolved into a more conservative stance during his time as governor. The change in 2005 on abortion drew particular attention and was the result of what Romney described as an epiphany experienced while investigating stem cell research issues. He later said, "Changing my position was in line with an ongoing struggle that anyone has that is opposed to abortion personally, vehemently opposed to it, and yet says, 'Well, I'll let other people make that decision.' And you say to yourself, but if you believe that you're taking innocent life, it's hard to justify letting other people make that decision."

This increased alignment with traditional conservatives on social issues coincided with Romney's becoming a candidate for the 2008 Republican nomination for President, and also included a new-found admiration for the National Rifle Association paired with ineptly attempting to portray himself as a lifelong hunter, rarely mentioning his Massachusetts health care law, being a convert on signing an anti-tax pledge, and displaying bluster or boldness on foreign policy matters (such as wanting to double the number of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp). In response, many skeptics, including a number of Republicans, charged Romney with opportunism and having a lack of core principles. The fervor with which Romney adopted his new stances and attitudes contributed to the perception of inauthenticity which hampered that campaign. Romney generally responds to criticisms of ideological pandering with remarks like, "The older I get, the smarter Ronald Reagan gets."

While there have been many biographical parallels between the lives of George Romney and his son Mitt, There are also obvious differences in their paths, including that George had a hardscrabble upbringing while Mitt's was affluent, and that Mitt far exceeded George's accomplishments in formal education.|group="nb"}} one particular difference is that while George was willing to defy political trends, Mitt has been much more willing to adapt to them. Mitt Romney has said that learning from experience and changing views accordingly is a virtue, and that, "If you're looking for someone who's never changed any positions on any policies, then I'm not your guy." Journalist and author Daniel Gross sees Romney as approaching politics in the same terms as a business competing in markets, in that successful executives do not hold firm to public stances over long periods of time, but rather constantly devise new strategies and plans to deal with new geographical regions and ever-changing market conditions. Political profiler Ryan Lizza sees the same question regarding whether Romney's business skills can be adapted to politics, saying that "while giving customers exactly what they want may be normal in the corporate world, it can be costly in politics". Writer Robert Draper holds a somewhat similar perspective: "The Romney curse was this: His strength lay in his adaptability. In governance, this was a virtue; in a political race, it was an invitation to be called a phony."

Immediately following the March 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Romney attacked the landmark legislation as "an unconscionable abuse of power" and said the act should be repealed. The hostile attention it held among Republicans created a potential problem for the former governor, since the new federal law was in many ways similar to the Massachusetts health care reform passed during Romney's term; as one Associated Press article stated, "Obamacare ... looks a lot like Romneycare." While acknowledging that his plan was not perfect and still was a work in progress, Romney did not back away from it, and has consistently defended the state-level health insurance mandate that underpins it. He has focused on its having had bipartisan support in the state legislature, while the Obama plan received no Republican support at all in Congress, and upon it being the right answer to Massachusetts' specific problems at the time. A Romney spokesperson has stated: "Mitt Romney has been very clear in all his public statements that he is opposed to a national individual mandate. He believes those decisions should be left to the states." While Romney has not explicitly argued for a federally-imposed mandate, during his 1994 Senate campaign he indicated he would vote for an overall health insurance proposal that contained one, and he suggested during his time as governor and during his 2008 presidential campaign that the Massachusetts plan was a model for the nation and that over time mandate plans might be adopted by most or all of the nation.

Throughout his business, Olympics, and political career, Romney's instinct has been to apply the "Bain way" towards problems. Romney has said, "There were two key things I learned at Bain. One was a series of concepts for approaching tough problems and a problem-solving methodology; the other was an enormous respect for data, analysis, and debate." He has written, "There are answers in numbers – gold in numbers. Pile the budgets on my desk and let me wallow." Romney believes the Bain approach is not only effective in the business realm but also in running for office and, once there, in solving political conundrums such as proper Pentagon spending levels and the future of Social Security. Former Bain and Olympics colleague Fraser Bullock has said of Romney, "He's not an ideologue. He makes decisions based on researching data more deeply than anyone I know." Romney's technocratic instincts have thus always been with him; in his public appearances during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign he sometimes gave PowerPoint presentations rather than conventional speeches. Upon taking office he became, in the words of ''The Boston Globe'', "the state's first self-styled CEO governor". During his 2008 presidential campaign he was constantly asking for data, analysis, and opposing arguments, and has been viewed as a potential "CEO president" should he get that far.

Religious aspects of public image

Romney is a sixth-generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church, colloquially known as the Mormon church). He has avoided speaking publicly about specific church doctrines, and pointed out that the U.S. Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office. Polls in 2007 and 2011 indicated that about a quarter of Republican voters, and a quarter of voters overall, said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who was a Mormon. Romney's "Faith in America" speech, delivered in December 2007, addressed the matter. In it, Romney said he should neither be elected nor rejected based upon his religion, and echoed Senator John F. Kennedy's famous speech during his 1960 presidential campaign in saying "I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law." Instead of discussing the specific tenets of his faith, he said that he would be informed by it and that, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

One academic study, based upon research conducted throughout the 2008 primaries, showed that a negative perception of Mormonism was widespread during the election, and that perception was often resistant to factual information that would correct mistaken notions about the religion or Romney's relationship to it. The authors concluded that, "For Romney ... religion ''is'' the central story." Another study, analyzing a survey conducted during January 2008 (when an African American, a woman, and a Mormon all had realistic chances of becoming the first president from that group), found that voters had internally accepted the notion of black equality, paving the way for Barack Obama's election; had partially established but not fully internalized the notion of gender equality, making Hillary Rodham Clinton's task somewhat more difficult; but had only selectively internalized the notion of religious equality, and in particular not extended it to Mormons, thus making Romney's run significantly more difficult. Those authors concluded that, "for a Mormon candidate, the road to the presidency remains very rough ... The bias against a Mormon candidate is substantial."

The June 13, 2011, issue of ''Newsweek'' magazine featured a Romney-themed cover based on the popular ''Book of Mormon'' Broadway musical, and dubbed the summer of 2011 "The Mormon Moment". Analysts expect Romney's Mormonism to become an issue again in the 2012 campaign.

Electoral history

Awards and honors

Romney has received four honorary doctorates: an Honorary Doctor of Business from the University of Utah in 1999, an Honorary Doctor of Law from Bentley College in 2002, an Honorary Doctor of Public Administration from Suffolk University Law School in 2004, and an Honorary Doctor of Public Service from Hillsdale College in 2007.

''People'' magazine included Romney in its 50 Most Beautiful People list for 2002. In 2004, Romney received the inaugural Truce Ideal Award for his role in the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2008, he shared with his wife Ann the Canterbury Medal from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, for "refus[ing] to compromise their principles and faith" during the presidential campaign.

See also

'' Presidents and Prophets: the Story of America’s Presidents and the LDS Church''

List of JD/MBAs

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

;Official

Romney official campaign website

;Other

Campaign Contributions made by Mitt Romney at NewsMeat

Press releases as Governor of Massachusetts 2003–2007

The Making of Mitt Romney, ''Boston Globe'', 2007, 7-part series

Romney and health care: In the thick of history, ''Boston Globe'', 2011, first of a series

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Mormon missionaries Category:American chief executives Category:American Latter Day Saints Category:American investors Category:American management consultants Category:American Mormon missionaries Category:American political writers Category:Bain Capital Category:Bishops of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Category:Boston Consulting Group people Category:Businesspeople from Massachusetts Category:Brigham Young University alumni Category:Cranbrook Educational Community alumni Category:Governors of Massachusetts Category:Harvard Business School alumni Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Massachusetts Republicans Category:Michigan Republicans Category:Mormon missionaries in France Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts Category:People from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:Pratt–Romney family Category:Private equity and venture capital investors Category:Stake presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Category:Stanford University alumni Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2012 Category:Writers from Massachusetts Category:Businesspeople from Michigan

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Name	Herman Cain
Office	Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
Term start	1995
Term end	1996
Predecessor	Burton A. Dole, Jr
Successor	A. Drue Jennings
Office2	Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
Term start2	1992
Term end2	1994
Predecessor2	Burton A. Dole, Jr
Successor2	A. Drue Jennings
Birth date	December 13, 1945
Birth place	Memphis, Tennessee, US
Residence	Sandy Springs, Georgia, US
Occupation	BusinessmanRadio hostColumnist
Party	Republican
Spouse	Gloria Cain
Children	Melanie Cain and Vincent Cain
Religion	National Baptist
Alma mater	Morehouse College (B.A.)Purdue University (M.S.)
Website	hermancain.com }}

Herman Cain (born December 13, 1945) is an American businessman, politician, columnist, and radio host from Georgia. He is the former chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza and a former deputy chairman (1992–94) and chairman (1995–96) of the board of directors to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Before his business and economics career he worked as a mathematician in ballistics for the United States Navy. Cain's newspaper column is distributed by North Star Writers Group. He lives in the Atlanta suburbs, where he also serves as a minister at Antioch Baptist Church North.

In January 2011, Cain announced he had formed an exploratory committee for a potential presidential campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and on May 21, 2011, Cain officially announced his candidacy.

Background

Cain was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on December 13, 1945, the son of Lenora (née Davis) and Luther Cain, Jr. His mother was a cleaner and his father was a chauffeur. He was raised in Georgia. He graduated from Morehouse College in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and received a Master of Science degree in computer science from Purdue University in 1971, while he was also working full-time in ballistics for the U.S. Department of the Navy. Cain has authored four books: ''Leadership is Common Sense'' (1997), ''Speak as a Leader'' (1999), ''CEO of SELF'' (October 2001), and ''They Think You're Stupid'' (May 2005). He also authored an article titled "The Intangibles of Implementation" in the technical journal ''Interfaces'' (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1979, pp. 144-147), published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Business career

After completing his master's degree from Purdue, Cain left the Department of the Navy and began working for The Coca-Cola Company as a business analyst. In 1977, he joined Pillsbury where he rose to the position of Vice President by the early 1980s. He left his executive post to work for Burger King – a Pillsbury subsidiary at the time – managing 400 stores in the Philadelphia area. Under Cain's leadership, his region went from the least profitable for Burger King to the most profitable in three years. This prompted Pillsbury to appoint him President and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, another of their then-subsidiaries. Within 14 months, Cain had returned Godfather's to profitability. In 1988, Cain and a group of investors bought Godfather's from Pillsbury. Cain continued as CEO until 1996, when he resigned to become CEO of the National Restaurant Association – a trade group and lobby organization for the restaurant industry – where he had previously been chairman concurrently with his role at Godfather's.

Cain became a member of the board of directors to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1992 and served as its chairman from January 1995 to August 1996, when he resigned to become active in national politics. Cain was a 1996 recipient of the Horatio Alger Award.

Cain was on the board of directors of Aquila, Inc. from 1992 to 2008, and also served as a board member for Nabisco, Whirlpool, Reader's Digest, and AGCO, Inc.

Media work

Cain serves as a commentator for Fox Business; he is also a syndicated columnist distributed by the North Star Writers Group. Until February 2011, Cain hosted ''The Herman Cain Show'' on Atlanta talk radio station News Talk 750 WSB, a Cox Radio affiliate. In 2009, Cain founded "Hermanator's Intelligent Thinkers Movement" (HITM), aimed at organizing 100,000 activists in every congressional district in the United States in support of a strong national defense, the FairTax, tax cuts, energy independence, capping government spending, and restructuring Social Security.

Political activities

Role in the defeat of the Clinton health care plan

Cain publicly opposed the 1993/1994 health care plan of President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. As president-elect of the National Restaurant Association, he challenged Bill Clinton on the costs of the employer mandate contained within the bill and criticizing its effect on small businesses. Cain has been described as one of the primary "saboteurs" of the plan: :The Clintons would later blame "Harry and Louise," the fictional couple in the ads aired by the insurance industry, for undermining health reform. But the real saboteurs are named Herman and John. Herman Cain is the president of Godfather's Pizza and president-elect of the National Restaurant Association. An articulate black entrepreneur, Cain transformed the debate when he challenged Clinton at a town meeting in Kansas City, Mo., last April. Cain asked the president what he was supposed to say to the workers he would have to lay off because of the cost of the "employer mandate." Clinton responded that there would be plenty of subsidies for small businessmen, but Cain persisted. "Quite honestly, your calculation is inaccurate," he told the president. "In the competitive marketplace it simply doesn't work that way." Joshua Green of ''The Atlantic'' has called Cain's exchange with Clinton his "auspicious debut on the national political stage."

1996 Senior Advisor of Dole/Kemp Campaign

Cain was a senior economic advisor to the Dole/Kemp presidential campaign in 1996.

2000 presidential campaign

Cain briefly ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000; he says it was more about making political statements than winning the nomination. "George W. Bush was the chosen one, he had the campaign DNA that followers look for." However, Cain went on to state, "I believe that I had a better message and I believe that I was the better messenger."

2004 U.S. Senate candidacy

In 2004, Cain ran for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, pursuing the seat that came open with the retirement of Democrat Zell Miller. Cain sought the Republican nomination, facing congressmen Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins in the primary. Cain and Collins both hoped to deny Isakson a majority on primary day in order to force him into a runoff. Collins tried to paint Cain as a moderate, citing Cain's support for affirmative action programs, while Cain argued that he was a conservative, noting that he opposed the legality of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Cain finished second in the primary with 26.2% of the vote, ahead of Collins, who won 20.6%, but because Isakson won 53.2% of the vote, Isakson was able to avoid a runoff.

2012 presidential candidacy

In 2010, "Cain addressed more than 40 Tea Party rallies, hit all the early presidential states, and became a YouTube sensation." In April, he teased the audience at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference about his being a possible 2012 presidential candidate by saying that there may be a "dark horse candidate." On September 24, 2010, Cain announced that he was considering a run for president in 2012 on the Republican Party ticket. "In December, he was the surprise choice for 2012 GOP nominee in a reader poll on the conservative Web site RedState.com, narrowly edging out [Sarah] Palin."

Cain announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on January 12, 2011 on the Fox News Channel program ''Your World with Neil Cavuto''.

Cain supports a non-federally subsidized efficient economic stimulus, saying: "We could grow this economy faster if we had bolder, more direct stimulus policies," criticizing President Barack Obama's stimulus plan as simply a "spending bill" instead of meaningful stimulus through permanent tax cuts.

In February 2011, Cain addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Ed Morrisey of the conservative website Hot Air said he "stole the show" and that some attendees were moved to tears by the speech. In contrast, liberal website AlterNet accused Cain of pandering to white conservatives and referred to him and other black conservatives as "garbage pail kids". Cain called the news website's attacks racist and condemned its "shameful behavior".

A number of comments made by Cain regarding his attitudes towards Muslim people have caused controversy. He has stated that he was "uncomfortable" when he found that the surgeon operating on his liver and colon cancer was Muslim, later explaining "based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them". Following a number of such comments, he was asked in March 2011 if he would feel comfortable appointing a Muslim to his administration or as a Judge. Cain said "No, I will not ... There's this creeping attempt, there's this attempt, to gradually ease Shariah Law, and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government" and he went on to cite court cases in Oklahoma and New Jersey as evidence. He was criticized for this remark by conservatives at Grover Norquist's weekly Wednesday Gatherings, one of whom called the remark "frightening." Cain's statement was also criticized as "bigotry" and "muslim bashing" from CAIR, whose spokesperson stated "It would be laughable if it weren't having such a negative impact on the lives of Muslim Americans". Cain opposed the building of an Islamic Center for a Muslim community at a site in Tennessee, claiming that it was "an infringement and an abuse of our freedom of religion" and "just another way to try to gradually sneak Shariah law into our laws". Defending himself against the suggestion that this would be bigotry or discrimination during an interview with Chris Wallace, he defended his position, saying "I'm willing to take a harder look at people who might be terrorists, that's what I'm saying".

In an interview with Bloomberg view, Cain argued that he is a 'black American' rather than an 'African American' on account of being able to trace his ancestors within the US, describing Barack Obama as "more of an international...look, he was raised in Kenya, his mother was white from Kansas and her family had an influence on him, it’s true, but his dad was Kenyan". Interviewer Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out that Obama had spent 4 years of his childhood abroad, and that it was in Indonesia – not Kenya, at which point Cain revised his claim.

On May 5, 2011 Fox News presented a presidential campaign debate. Cain was one of five potential candidates who participated. (The others were Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum as the higher-profile candidates declined Fox's invitation.) Cain was declared the winner by pollster Frank Luntz after a show of hands among 29 debate witnesses who were chosen by Fox to act as a post-performance focus group.

On June 3, 2011, an Insider-Advantage poll showed Cain leading the field of Republican primary candidates among Georgia Republicans. A July 2011 Zogby poll showed Cain in second place nationally, with 18% of the vote, behind Michele Bachmann and ahead of Romney.

Political positions

Personal life

Religious involvement

Cain is an associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta, which he joined at the age of 10. The church is part of the National Baptist Convention, USA.

Cancer

In 2006, Cain was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in both his colon and his liver. Cain underwent surgery and chemotherapy following the diagnosis, and has since reported that he is cancer-free.

Race

Cain has shared first-hand accounts of racial discrimination. In a YouTube video uploaded by his campaign, he describes the experience of sitting behind the white/black demarcation on buses. He also talks about the experience of taking turns with his brother, standing watch as each took a drink from the "white" side of a segregated water fountain in a department store.

Honorary degrees

Cain is the recipient of eight honorary degrees from Creighton, Johnson & Wales, Morehouse College, Nebraska, New York City Technical College, Purdue, Suffolk University, and Tougaloo College.

References

External links

Herman Cain, President 2012 official campaign website

Column archives at the North Star Writers Group

Profile at ''Forbes''

Watch Herman Cain Battle Bill Clinton on Health Care, Joshua Green, ''The Atlantic'', January 2011, with Profile

Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:African American United States presidential candidates Category:African American radio personalities Category:American businesspeople Category:American chief executives Category:American columnists Category:American political writers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:Colorectal cancer survivors Category:Georgia (U.S. state) Republicans Category:Morehouse College alumni Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:People from Memphis, Tennessee Category:Purdue University alumni Category:Radio personalities from Atlanta, Georgia Category:United States presidential candidates, 2012 Category:Businesspeople from Tennessee

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