Horror Stories: Mitt Romney's Shameful Record with Mormon Women

It was in the summer of 1983 that a pregnant woman in her late thirties--Carrel Hilton Sheldon--was informed by her doctor that she had a life-threatening blood clot lodged in her pelvic region. In treating the clot, Sheldon was administered an overdose of the blood thinner Heparin, an overdose that not only resulted in significant internal bleeding, but also extensive damage to her kidneys, to the point where she was on the verge of needing a transplant. Her life was clearly in peril.

Sheldon's doctor advised her that the overdose of Heparin might have also harmed her eight-week-old fetus and, given the possible fatal repercussions to her, he recommended that she abort her pregnancy.

Sheldon, a mother of four at the time (a fifth child had died as an infant), was then a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), outside of Boston. The LDS leader in Massachusetts, called the "stake president," was a Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Gordon Williams, and he counseled Sheldon to follow her doctor's advice to terminate the pregnancy and protect her own life, so that she could continue caring for her four living children. "Of course you should have the abortion," she recalled him saying.

According to an account later written anonymously by Sheldon for the LDS women's journal, Exponent II, it was after receiving this counsel from Williams supporting the potentially life-saving procedure that she experienced an uninvited visit in her hospital room from her Mormon bishop at the time, 36-year-old Mitt Romney, who adamantly opposed the abortion.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/mitt-romney-mormon-women_b_1956568.html