Movement leaders look the other way as the party waters down decades of support for the right to life of unborn children.
Movement leaders look the other way as the party waters down decades of support for the right to life of unborn children.
F or decades, the Republican Party platform has invoked the unborn child’s “fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed” and called for a constitutional amendment and legislation “to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”
No longer. In its draft of a much-truncated platform, the GOP has gutted its language regarding abortion. It no longer mentions the fundamental right to life of the unborn, instead stating blandly that “we proudly stand for families and Life.”
The platform features an incoherent misreading of the 14th Amendment: “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights.”
And it pledges only to “oppose Late Term Abortion,” with no policy specifics, while also offering support for “IVF (fertility treatments),” which pro-lifers have long opposed for its destruction of embryonic human life.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential nominee has essentially told pro-lifers to take a hike, repeatedly insisting that abortion regulation is a matter for states — and states alone — to decide. He has misinterpreted a recent Supreme Court case to claim that the high court has required chemical abortion to remain legal and has said he agrees with this willful misreading of the decision. One of his vice-presidential hopefuls signaled his agreement with this misreading, while another has taken pains to align himself with Trump’s states-only stance.
This new state of affairs is a disaster for the pro-life movement, which has long fought to retain influence within the GOP to have a political vessel for its effort to protect unborn human life. Now, that work of decades is being reversed by a Trump-induced effort to be rid of the topic for good, premised on the mistaken notion that being meaningfully pro-life is an electoral liability. What’s more, the alteration appears to have been conducted by means of an underhanded, rushed process that intentionally prohibited debate over the adjustments to the pro-life plank.
Yet some in the pro-life fold have been eager to cast the new platform as a victory for the movement. Leaders from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, American Principles Project, and Americans United for Life, among others, issued a joint statement claiming that the platform reflects Trump’s “[commitment to] protecting life and promoting the family.”
Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life Action, told Catholic News Agency that, while “not perfect,” the platform represents “two very big wins” for the pro-life movement: acknowledging that the 14th Amendment protects all life, including unborn life, and condemning late-term abortion.
In her own statement on behalf of SBA — the leading lobbying and spending arm of the pro-life movement — president Marjorie Dannenfelser likewise cast the platform as a win: “It is important that the GOP reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment. Under this amendment, it is Congress that enacts and enforces its provisions. The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”
This stands in stark contrast to SBA’s statement just before the draft language became public:
For over a month, the pro-life movement has sought assurances from the Trump campaign that it will not gut the pro-life plank of the platform. . . . We are now just two business days away from the platform committee meeting and no assurances have been made. Instead, every indication is that the campaign will muscle through changes behind closed doors.
That is precisely what has happened, yet in response to a question from National Review, a spokesperson for SBA said that the platform’s “inclusion of the 14th Amendment, a federal amendment, leaves the door open for national protections for babies in the womb” — despite the fact that the platform says nothing about federal protections and misrepresents the 14th Amendment as giving states the ability to protect the unborn. Last spring, SBA promised to “oppose any presidential candidate” who failed to support a national abortion ban. Yet the spokesperson told National Review this week only that SBA has not formally endorsed Trump.
Others in the movement have been more willing to take the platform at its word. Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, issued a blistering takedown. Tim Chapman, incoming president of Advancing American Freedom, Pence’s advocacy group, told National Review, “The current platform is not one of a pro-life party, but of one that is putting politics over a moral issue. While Democrats grow more extreme Republicans wave a flag of retreat on the issue. If Republicans will not be the party of life, no party will be.”
Live Action president Lila Rose noted that “Trump’s recent statements on life, and the downgraded GOP platform protections on life he’s approved, are alienating some of his most passionate supporters and will win exactly zero fence sitters.” Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life Action, echoed this sentiment in a statement to National Review: “It is disappointing to see any party miss an opportunity to clearly and boldly reaffirm with specifics their policy commitment to the protection of the most vulnerable.”
A number of delegates to the platform-drafting process, meanwhile, called the revision “a clearly choreographed and scripted process which did not allow amendments to be discussed or voted upon.” In response, they’ve drafted a minority report, urging GOP leaders to reaffirm the party’s commitment to defending the fundamental right to life of the unborn.
Whether or not the party backtracks at next week’s convention, this state of affairs does not bode well for the future political success of the pro-life movement. It’s not as though the stronger pro-life language of the past ever bore much fruit in significant policy work from Republicans. How much less hope is there, then, of real pro-life progress with no endorsement of pro-life policy or even a willingness to acknowledge the fundamental right to life?