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

As Mitt Romney tries to redraw himself as a moderate in the final days of his Etch-A-Sketch candidacy, some troubling stories from his career as a Mormon leader outside of Boston can't be erased. In this excerpt from an investigative report for Metro Silicon Valley, award-winning journalist Geoffrey Dunn chronicles Romney's treatment of Mormon women while he served as a bishop and "stake president" in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Massachusetts.

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10/11/2012 9:21 am

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.

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