Washington ? Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman faced questions about his position on abortion Friday after a New Hampshire newspaper indicated he thought the historic Roe v. Wade decision needed to be re-examined because of medical advances.

Lieberman said late Friday that The Union-Leader of Manchester “misreported that he thinks the Roe v. Wade case should be revisited.”

Edward Domaingue, managing editor of the newspaper, said, “We stand by what we reported.”

The Connecticut senator issued a statement Friday saying, “I did not say nor do I believe that Roe should be looked at again, revisited or reconsidered.”

“I said in that interview what I have said for years — namely that medical science has advanced the time of legal viability to approximately 24 weeks,” Lieberman said. “In response, the courts have determined that the viability standard has replaced the original trimester formulation of Roe.”

A fetus is considered “viable” when it can survive outside of the womb.

Lieberman said Friday the court’s shift to a viability standard had actually “lengthened the time of a woman’s clearly protected right to choose in Roe from the first trimester to 24 weeks.”

The Union Leader reported Friday that Lieberman supported a woman’s right to choose, but also recognized that the period of time in which a woman had a right to get an abortion was gradually shrinking. Because of advances in medical science, a fetus can survive if born or delivered earlier in a pregnancy, Lieberman said in the newspaper story.

Lieberman said late Friday he was trying to explain in the newspaper interview how the courts gradually have shifted how they measure the stages of a pregnancy — from the three “trimesters” of a pregnancy to a determination of when a fetus is nonviable or viable.

“To me, Roe v. Wade said that in the stages up to viability (of the fetus), the state basically cannot intervene in a decision a woman makes to go forward with a pregnancy or not,” Lieberman said, according to The Union Leader. “But after viability, the state can regulate that choice because the interest of the fetus goes up.”

He was quoted: “What has changed is that the court talked in terms of trimesters — but has viability — because of the extraordinary advances in medical science — begun to occur at an earlier age?”