When is a hypocrite not a hypocrite?

When they can consistently demonstrate a changed heart or mind about something.

I still feel sorry for Mitt Romney, for the bashing he took during his presidential bid over being a Mormon and for taking a "pro-choice" stance while governor of Massachusetts and later switching to a more "pro-life" platform.

Was he an opportunist or did he really have a change of heart about the issue of abortion?

You know, only Mitt and God will ever know for sure.

And that's why I thought it unwise to call him a hypocrite without some evidence that he was continuing to preach one thing while practicing another.

I used to be staunchly on the side of the pro-choicers myself, believing individual liberty, i.e. that of the woman, to be inviolable.

My logic, alas, was flawed but it took many years and the births of four children before I realized it.

No person reprogrammed me. A growing doubt about the legitimacy of the pro-choice platform came about slowly, gradually, with each birth and the everpresent concern about whether the baby I was carrying would make it.

The baby. Yeah, that's what each of them was alright. The word "fetus" drives me nuts. I know it's scientific and politically correct and all not to attach personhood to an unborn person, but ask any woman carrying a baby she really wants and she'll tell you it's a baby and will probably even tell you the child's name.

If it's not a baby and it doesn't matter, then why do so many people walk around with hearts broken when they lose a child to miscarriage or early death? Is worth of person one of those things we attain by degrees, i.e. as a two-month old in the womb we aren't as valuable or worthy as we will be at nine months in utero or five months after we're born?

I wade into deep water with this line of questioning, I know.

Do I think abortion should be outlawed? No. Because I think that no matter how many laws you pass prohibiting this or any other vice, the vice will not disappear by virtue of being outlawed.

The only thing that will make abortion obsolete is a collective change of heart. Some say it will come by prayer, some say it will come by revelation and widespread publication of the gritty truth behind the procedure and its proponents.

I am humbly grateful for the evolution of my thought on this issue. It is solid, permanent and liberating.

To borrow liberally from the all-time famous hymn "Amazing Grace," I once was lost AND blind, but somehow I was found and now I see.