FLIP FLOP FLYNN

2004:

Former Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn urged fellow Roman Catholic and home-state Sen. John F. Kerry not to "impose any abortion litmus test on candidates for the federal judiciary -- especially those who are faithful Catholics" if he is elected president.

In an ad that took nearly a full page in Sunday's New York Times, Flynn scolded Kerry for saying he would appoint only people who support abortion rights to be justices on the U.S. Supreme Court....

Kerry has denied that his standard amounts to a "litmus test," only an assurance that any prospective justice would support a constitutionally protected right of privacy....

--Boston Globe/AP


1992:

And George Bush -- George Bush won’t guarantee a women’s right to choose; I will.

Listen. Here me now. I am not pro-abortion; I am pro-choice, strongly. I believe this difficult and painful decision should be left to the women of America.

I hope the right to privacy can be protected and we will never again have to discuss this issue on political platforms. But I am old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade, and I do not want to return to the time when we made criminals of women and their doctors.

--Bill Clinton, acceptance speech, Democratic convention, July 16, 1992

On September 11, [1992,] I went to South Bend, Indiana, to deliver an address to the students and faulty at Notre Dame, America's most famous Catholic university.... The church hierarchy agreed with Bush's opposition to abortion, but I was far closer to the Catholic positions on economic and social justice.... Boston mayor Ray Flynn and Senator Harris Wofford came along to lend moral support.

--Bill Clinton, My Life, page 428

*****

(Here's the text of Flynn's ad.)