SPRINGFIELD -- When asked if he'd attempt to change any social issues in Massachusetts, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Fisher shook both his head and hand to signal no.

“I don’t think it’s a governmental issue," Fisher told MassLive.com and The Republican Editorial Board on Tuesday.

While Fisher said he won't change laws currently on the books, he intends to sway the hearts and minds of the commonwealth on such issues, especially on reproductive rights.

Fisher said he believes most women are coerced into getting an abortion, doesn't believe in abortion in cases of rape or incest and spoke of the potential future of abortion becoming illegal again.

“I have a pro-life position,” Fisher said. “I’m going to be an advocate for that and speak in a bully pulpit, but no laws, no judicial mandates no anything like that.”

The gubernatorial hopeful then recalled a conversation with a woman who works at a crisis pregnancy center, a resource center run by pro-life organizations. "She told me some stuff I hadn't heard about before, and she says all this is backed up."

“The vast majority of women - 64 percent - who end up getting an abortion say that they didn’t have a choice," Fisher said, citing the woman. "That either their boyfriend, their husband or their employer sort of pushed them into it.”

Forty-eight percent of all pregnancies in Massachusetts - 58,000 - were unintended in 2008, according to the most recent data from Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization that tracks reproductive health data. Of those unintended pregnancies, 45 percent resulted in birth, 42 percent in abortions and three percent in miscarriages, according to Guttmacher.

The rate of births from unintended pregnancies is 5 percent lower than the national average.

Involuntary abortion was declared a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials in the 1940s. Neither researchers at the Guttmacher nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention track this data.

Fisher also spoke of the differences of a Planned Parenthood clinic and a crisis pregnancy center. Midway through he seemed to confuse the two.

The Hyde Amendment was passed by Congress in 1997 which bars federal funds for being used to pay for abortions with exceptions for rape or incest.

Fisher was asked on the issue of exceptions. "In your stance against abortion, have you ever encountered any exceptions? Are there any exceptions in your mind? Or potential exceptions?"

"We're not talking about exceptions," the candidate responded. “We’re talking about a person.”

Fisher brought up the story of an 11-year-old girl in Chile who was raped by her mother's boyfriend and decided to carry the pregnancy to term.

Fisher then brought up a past interview with Boston media personality Margery Eagan who asked of a hypothetical future in which abortion becomes illegal and what charges he'd like to see brought against those that have abortions.

"I said to her, 'I don't know, I don't know.' And since I've thought about it, I've said, 'you know, love rules the day,'" Fisher said. "I think that, maybe, if there’s anything to be done, it’s with the doctors or the people that are providing them. For the women who are forced into that for whatever reason, maybe just simply counseling, talk. It’s a horrible, horrible thing."