Will October Surprise Show Romney Talking Woman Out of Abortion?

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 23, 2012   |   6:47PM   |   Washington, DC

Speculation has reached a fever pitch today after the Drudge Report started the rumor mill moving in full swing about a potential October Surprise pro-abortion attorney Gloria Allred reported has in store for Mitt Romney.

Drudge teased the potential October surprised on Friday and the “news” web site Radar Online is reported today that Allred is moving forward with whatever she has planned, in an effort to shake up the presidential race. The move is likely intended to help Obama, who is clearly trailing in polls now to the former governor.

“Famed civil rights attorney Gloria Allred will be in a Boston area courtroom Wednesday in an attempt to unseal the sworn testimony given by Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, in a prior court case, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting,” the web site posted late Tuesday. “The Boston Globe is headed to court tomorrow morning for an emergency hearing in an attempt to obtain a court order to unseal the sworn testimony given by Mitt Romney in a prior court case and to lift a gag order so that the parties can speak about Romney. Gloria Allred will be in court representing one of the parties in the case,” a source close to the situation tells RadarOnline.com.”

“The emergency hearing will take place at the Norfolk Probate & Family Court in Canton, Massachusetts, and Justice Jennifer Ulwick will oversee the proceedings which will begin at 9 a.m. EST,” it continued.

Speculation thus far has centered on the case of Carrel Hilton Sheldon, a former Mormon Romney helped during his time as a pastor and church leader. Romney reportedly was helping Sheldon during a difficult pregnancy and talked her out of having an abortion.

Liberal we sites have floated their interpretation of the story for some time, with the liberal web site AlterNet telling the tale this way:

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

 

A far more ominous tale in the Romney canon also took place that summer, one that has been largely swept under the rug as the former governor of Massachusetts challenges incumbent Barack Obama for the presidency. There have been no songs written about it, no cartoons, no gags on late-night television, no magazine covers.

It was in August of that year, shortly after the Romney family returned from their vacation to Lake Huron, that a pregnant woman in her late 30s—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 8-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 at that time, 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 her Williams supporting the potentially life-saving procedure that she experienced an uninvited visit in her hospital from her Mormon bishop at the time, 36-year-old Mitt Romney, who adamantly opposed the abortion.

“He regaled me with stories of his sister and her retarded child and what a blessing the child had been to the family,” Sheldon wrote of the incident. “He told me that ‘as your bishop, my concern is with the child.’”

According to the theory about the October Surprise, Sheldon’s anonymous account has been presented in third-hand by liberal blogs and others seeking to paint Romney as an extremist, but Allred may be looking to unseal court documents that prevent her from discussing it publicly. If she is successful, and if this is the thrust of Allred’s legal digging, Sheldon may come forward publicly to share her story further.

If all of this speculation is true, and Romney did help talk a mother out of an abortion of a baby, whose situation was really no different than that of NFL football star Tim Tebow, Romney’s stock with pro-life and conservative voters may go through the roof while liberals seek to use essentially the only attack they’ve had this election, a phony War on Women.