On Piers Morgan last night, Herman Cain appeared to endorse a pro-choice stance on abortion, stating both that he believed that life begins at conception and that it isn’t “the government’s role” to make the decision about keeping a baby conceived by rape or incest. 

Given that Cain has claimed to be pro-life in the past and recently, the episode raises two questions. 1) Is his position on abortion other than what he has portrayed it to be, in his past Senate race and during this race? 2) Why is he unable to set out and explain his stance on life issue, and why does he struggle with routine, predictable questions about abortion? (This isn’t the first time he’s been tripped up, he also had problems with the issue during an interview with John Stossel earlier this month.)

It’s possible that Cain merely got his words twisted up. The other possibility is that he simply hasn’t thought through the trickier issues related to abortion.