Hutchison and I reached the tender topic while visiting about her latest book, "Leading Ladies," which includes profiles of 15 first ladies, including Hillary Clinton. Hutchison calls Clinton a show horse and work horse in the U.S. Senate — and the most serious female candidate for president in U.S. history. Yet Hutchison, who has long been identified as favoring abortion rights with restrictions, told me she also thinks "the kind of judges she (Clinton) would appoint would be wrong for our Constitution."

I asked if she'd be upset if the '73 court decision were overturned. Her reply confused me — though on reflection, maybe it underscored a calibrated stance she's taken on abortion for years. "I would like to hold that (question) off. I'd really rather not talk about that kind of potential. There is a lot there, but this is not the time," she said. "There's so much more to liberal judges that would not just interpret the Constitution, but make law from the bench."

Activists for protecting life from conception and those for safeguarding a woman's right to abortion each view Hutchison as sitting on the wrong side of the issue.

Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, expressed gratitude for Hutchison's votes against federal funding of abortion. Still, he said, "I would like her to say that she's concerned that Hillary would support Roe vs. Wade," the 1973 decision.

The National Right to Life Committee gives Hutchison an 83 percent rating for siding with its positions in five of six votes this year, the exception being an April vote to enhance stem-cell research partly by developing embryonic stem cell lines.

Pojman said, "I would be very concerned if Sen. Hutchison ran for governor."

NARAL Pro-Choice America, formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League, gave Hutchison a zero rating in eight of her first 14 years in the Senate and no more than a 20 percent abortion-rights rating in any year; Hutchison has sided with abortion rights in six of more than 70 key votes.

"We categorize the senator as anti-choice," NARAL spokeswoman Kathryn Prael said. "She wants Texans to think she's pro-choice, but her voting record doesn't uphold that."

In the big picture, Hutchison notes in her book that lawmakers aren't permitted "maybe" stands. "You have to vote," she told me. "You have to hold that hand up and make 50 percent of the people mad most of the time." But often "things are not black and white; they are nuanced. I so wish we could do more that would come to consensus."

Chasing consensus fits with a governor's job description. My bet: Hutchison can't wait to show that she does, too.