"He said, 'I just want you to know you are not alone'"

Mormons oppose abortion, except in extreme cases like rape, incest or where the life of the woman is in danger — and require that church elders be consulted. In 1990, Exponent II, a Mormon feminist magazine that Ms. Dushku, the Suffolk University professor, helped found, published an article by a married mother of four who recounted her own experience after doctors advised her to terminate her pregnancy when she was being treated for a potentially dangerous blood clot.

Her bishop got wind of the situation, she wrote, and showed up unannounced at the hospital, warning her sternly not to go forward. The article did not identify Mr. Romney as the bishop, but Ms. Dushku later did.

Now the woman has come forward, identifying herself in Mr. Scott’s book as Carrel Hilton Sheldon. (Through Ms. Dushku, she declined to be interviewed.) “Mitt has many, many winning qualities,” she is quoted as saying, “but at that time he was blind to me as a human being.”

Ms. Dushku sees hypocrisy and callousness; Mr. Scott sees inexperience.

“I don’t think he’s an evil, unfeeling, uncaring kind of guy,” Mr. Scott said. “He was a brand new bishop, he was pretty young to begin with, my sense is he was pretty full of himself, and he thought that he would not fulfill his obligation as bishop if he didn’t press the matter.”