Did Mitt Romney Make Millions from Abortion?

This column is not about how much money Mr. Romney makes, how out of touch he is with ordinary citizens, or how aborted fetuses should be disposed of. It asks questions about Mitt’s honesty, his integrity, how his business investments reflect his social issues platform, and how in control he is of his own statements.

Stericycle is a public company that specializes in medical waste disposal and management including the disposal of aborted fetuses. Mr. Romney, through Bain Capital and other Bain-related legal entities, invested $75 million dollars in Stericycle in 1999. SEC filings and other business papers related to Stericycle filed in November 1999 list him as CEO of Bain, and the “only executive to share voting and dispositive power with respect to 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle”.  The problem is that Romney claims to have left Bain Capital in early 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.   SEC papers with Mitt’s signature on them conflict with that statement; in fact, his signature appears on legal documents related to Stericycle as late as November of 1999. Seems that Mr. Romney is trying to create distance from Stericycle.

So the question I ask is: did Republican candidate Romney have full knowledge that his $75 million dollar investment would fund the removal of dead fetuses? If so, it is abhorrent to me that a candidate running for the Presidency of the US, whose stance on abortion (changed from pro-choice) is pro-life, who considers abortion murder, whose Vice-Presidential running mate wants to make abortion illegal, can push aside such strong moral convictions for profit. The hypocrisy is simply stunning.

We all know that removal and disposal of aborted fetuses is a necessity, and as a Republican friend of mine said “someone has to do it”. This is true. There seems to be incredible compartmentalizing of conflicting beliefs existing  in Mr. Romney’s mind and conscience.  If abortion is murder, and you are anti-abortion based on moral principles, should those beliefs not stop you from helping a dead fetus removal company grow and to become personally VERY profitable from that same company? Would the fact that you were a public servant who wants to form anti-abortion policy for women stop you from making the investment in Stericycle? Is there not something in your conscience that loudly and clearly says No to such an investment? If abortion is so heinous to you, how could you even consider making millions from it? Aren’t you a proponent of human life beginning at the moment of conception, and the belief of “personhood” status of a fetus? Isn’t a fetus, to you, a person?

Ironically, part of Stericycle’s mission statement is “Protecting People….”

Mr. Romney…where is your integrity? And I mean integrity as defined by Webster:  Moral soundness; honesty; freedom from corrupting influence or motive….

And BTW, it seems that Mr. Romney profited about $49 + million from this investment.