The culture warrior plays both sides
by digby
This is not some evolution over the course of 30 years. She was saying this in 2010:
In a wide-ranging interview Friday, Fiorina also explained her opposition to abortion rights in the most personal way since her campaign officially started last fall.
"I myself was not able to have children of my own, and so I know what a precious gift life is," Fiorina said. She helped raised two stepchildren, the daughters of her second husband, Frank Fiorina. One, Lori Ann Fiorina, 35, died last year.
"My husband's mother was told to abort him," Fiorina said. "She spent a year in the hospital after his birth. My husband is the joy of her life, and he is the rock of my life. So those experiences have shaped my view.
"I recognize that a lot of women disagree with me on that," Fiorina said. "But I also know that women in general are not single-issue voters. When I talk to women on this, it's not the issue that is on the table in this election."
The issues, she said, are "jobs, out-of-control spending, are we going to educate all of our children or not, are we going to provide health care."
Two-thirds of the California voters who responded to a 2009 Public Policy Institute of California survey said they did not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade, which established a woman's right to an abortion.
Fiorina said abortion rights would not be her litmus test for approving a Supreme Court nominee.
In November, while speaking at an event sponsored by the conservative magazine the American Spectator, Fiorina said she "probably would have voted for" Justice Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the court. Sotomayor has said she considers abortion rights to be an issue settled by the court.
On Friday, Fiorina said, "I do not believe where a potential judicial nominee stands on that issue is a qualifier or an unqualifier."
She added that while "many, many voters are going to conclude while that is a very important issue, it is frankly a decided issue," she said.
"The law is clear in the state of California, where there is a constitutional guarantee to the right to an abortion. So why are we talking about a theoretical issue?"
Anti-abortion zealots don't like this sort of waffling. Indeed, they are adamant that their champion be someone they can count on. And the litmus test for Supreme Court is non-negotiable.
On the other hand, some of the GOP women who are flocking to Fiorina's side are ambivalent about abortion themselves so perhaps it will even out. But I'm going to guess that if her numbers stay up, she's going to start getting some incoming from her more doctrinaire GOP rivals on this. There's video.
.