Romney dismisses photo taken at fund-raiser, says he is firmly antiabortion

Mitt Romney, who has taken hits from his Republican presidential rivals for his change of heart on abortion, waved off a photo, sent yesterday to several news organizations, that shows him at a fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood.

Nicki Nichols Gamble, a former president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, said the photo shows Mitt and Ann Romney at a private home in Cohasset in June 1994. At the time, Romney was hoping to unseat US Senator Edward M. Kennedy and was eager to show his support for abortion rights, said Gamble, who is pictured in the photo with her back to the camera.

The photo "demonstrates again, and it's already been demonstrated, that Mitt Romney has changed his mind about whether he is prochoice or antichoice more than once and that he seems to change his mind based on the practicality of the political situation," Gamble said in a telephone interview today.

Romney dismissed any significance of the photo.

"I attend a lot of events when I run for office. I don't recall the specific event," Romney said while campaigning in South Carolina, according to the Associated Press. "I think I've made it very clear. I was prochoice, or effectively prochoice, when I ran in 1994. As governor I'm prolife and I have a record of being prolife and I'm firmly prolife today."

Romney's campaign had acknowledged in May that Ann Romney made a $150 contribution to Planned Parenthood in 1994. Mitt Romney has said he changed his mind about abortion starting in 2004 after talking to scientists about stem cell research.

MICHAEL LEVENSON

SALEM, N.H. - John McCain turned his attention to economics yesterday by unveiling a new set of "progrowth" policies to keep up with a shift in the Republican conversation away from Iraq and terrorism and toward domestic concerns.

He proposed renewing tax cuts set to expire in 2011, altering congressional rules to make future tax increases more difficult, changing the tax code to encourage investment and entrepreneurship, and ending the alternative-minimum tax. "To have two tax codes in America is not an unacceptable situation," McCain said.

Yet in remarks the campaign labeled as an "economic plan for American prosperity," McCain turned away repeatedly from macroeconomic policy to overhaul issues seen as his strengths: controlling federal spending and limiting the role of lobbyists in securing tax loopholes.

SASHA ISSENBERG

Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns yesterday endorsed Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race, saying he was "extremely disappointed" with the negative tone of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"For a number of reasons I had intended to remain neutral throughout the New Hampshire primary process, but I find I can no longer do so," Burns said in a conference call with reporters. "Recent events compel me to declare my support for and endorse Barack Obama. As the tone of things changed last week, I think it was time to step up."

Bill Shaheen resigned last week as cochairman of Clinton's campaign after saying that Obama's teenage drug use would be a problem if he were to get the nomination.

Burns, who lives in Walpole, N.H., said that he's known the Clintons for at least 15 years and that Hillary Clinton is "getting some bad advice."

He also compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln. "If you were a pundit in the 1850s, you would be certain that the country needed an old pro like Clay or Calhoun or Chase or Stanton or those folks, but in fact what the country actually needed was a relatively - or so it seemed - inexperienced young wiry figure from Illinois. And I am willing to accept, at least in this case, that history does repeat itself."

JAMES W. PINDELL

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Eleven protesters led by national antiabortion activist Randall Terry were arrested yesterday outside Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign office and were charged with trespassing.

Police said the group was blocking the door at a building on Elm Street that houses the Giuliani office and several businesses. Giuliani supports abortion rights.

Officers told group members they would be arrested if they did not move out of the way. They reported that the protesters said they would not leave, so they were arrested on trespassing charges.

Terry is from Florida. He founded the antiabortion group Operation Rescue and has been arrested dozens of times at antiabortion protests.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Democrat Bill Richardson calls for a "new realism" in US foreign policy in a major piece in the upcoming "Foreign Affairs" journal.

"We must reject both isolationist fantasies of retreat from global engagement and neoconservative fantasies of transforming other countries through the unilateral application of American military power," Richardson writes. "Our policy also must go beyond the balance-of-power realism of the last century. In this new, interdependent world, we need a New Realism - one driven by an understanding that to defend our national interests, we must, more than ever, find common ground with others, so that we can lead them toward our common purposes."

FOON RHEE

WASHINGTON - A major environmental voting group gave high marks yesterday to Republican John McCain and all the Democratic presidential contenders for their focus on addressing global warming and energy challenges.

The League of Conservation Voters said McCain, an Arizona senator, stands out among his Republican rivals in making global warming an issue on the campaign trail. McCain was the only GOP candidate to return the organization's questionnaire.

ASSOCIATED PRESS