WASHINGTON, October 11, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United States should not be silent in the face of injustices like China’s brutally enforced one-child policy, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told attendees Saturday at the Values Voter Summit.
“The compassionate instincts of this country should not be silent in the face of injustices like China’s one-child policy,” Romney said. “And if I’m president, you will never hear me or my vice president tell the Chinese government that we understand or won’t second-guess compulsory sterilization and forced abortion.”
This latter statement was a reference to Vice President Joe Biden’s telling a Chinese audience in August that he would not “second guess” the Chinese policy that limits Chinese families to having just one child.
There are 16 million forced and coerced abortions each year in China, according to the organization All Girls Allowed.
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Addressing the conservative event’s largest-ever crowd, Romney also expressed his support for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and said he supported the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment prevents Medicaid and other federal tax dollars from funding abortions, except in cases or rape, incest, or where the mother’s life is at risk.
He voiced his desire that the Supreme Court would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, thereby allowing states to decide how to regulate or prohibit abortion.
Romney also addressed the importance of marriage, committing himself as president to appoint an attorney general who would defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton.
The Obama administration has been actively opposed to DOMA, arguing before the courts that the law is unconstitutional and should be voided.
The Republican candidate also lamented that government safety-net programs give more support to unmarried parents than to parents already married, penalizing the decision to marry. He called such marriage penalties “just wrong” and said that as president, he would eliminate them.
Romney has faced criticism and suspicion in some circles over the level of his commitment to social conservative values. Earlier this year he refused to sign a pro-life pledge by the Susan B. Anthony List.
The former governor has, however, signed a National Organization for Marriage pledge to defend traditional marriage.