Ann Romney Likens Mitt Serving As A Mormon Missionary To Serving In The Military

Ann Romney today on ABC’s “The View” said that her husband Mitt Romney serving as a Mormon missionary in Paris, France, in the late 1960’s was like the service — and, lives — given by members of the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Mrs. Romney also included her five sons in the  claim of equal service.

“I believe your religion does not allow you to fight,” Whoopi Goldberg said to Ann Romney. “No, that is not true. We have many members of our faith serving in the armed services.”

In fact, not only did Mitt Romney’s father arrange for him to go to France to serve as a Mormon missionary rather than serve in the U.S. military, he protested during his college years against those protesting the war — advocating that others serve their country, while he stayed in school.

“Whoopi said she’d read somewhere that the reason Mitt Romney did not serve in the military during the Vietnam war, ‘was because it’s against his religion’,” the Washington Post reported. “That is not correct. He was serving his mission,” Mrs. Romney said.

Her five sons also “served on their missions” she continued, adding that one son feels he’s giving back to his country as a doctor, now treating veterans. Five times, she said, she sent a boy to serve on their mission, five times they came back a man.

Ann Romney also discussed the issue of abortion and a woman’s right to choose as a “tender, tender issue,” and did her best to sidestep it.

“The good news is I’m not running for office and I don’t have to say what I feel,” Mrs. Romney said, as The Washington Post reported:

Ann Romney said pointedly, scoring off “The View” den mother Babs Walters something good, in re Bab’s abortion question. Then, Romney added, she’s “happy to say” she’s “pro life.”

Speaking for her husband, Ann Romney said, “Mitt has always been a pro-life person. He governed — when he ran, as a pro choice, but when a decision across his desk…to use embryos for experimentation, he could not have [that] on his conscience — creating human life for experimentation. And that’s when he came out with an editorial saying he was pro life.”