The RNC platform committee on Monday voted to adopt a new Republican Party platform that will move the GOP away from the national abortion ban it formerly championed and instead call for the issue to be handled by the states, in keeping with former president Donald Trump’s preferred approach.
The 2016 and 2020 platform included specific information about what the Republican Party would do to limit abortions, including supporting a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks and calling for states to pass the Human Life Amendment, which would amend the Constitution to say that life begins at conception. The prior platform stated that “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.”
The new platform, which was released by the Trump campaign and will be finalized by a vote of the full convention body next week, does not mention a federal abortion ban. Instead, the adopted language affirms the right of states to pass legislation limiting abortion: “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.”
The new platform, does, however, underscore Republican opposition to “late term abortion” and highlights the party’s support for “access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”
SBA Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser reacted to the platform’s approval in a statement on Monday saying 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,” she said, adding that the mission of the movement going forward ”must be to defeat the Biden-Harris extreme abortion agenda.”
However, Kristen Ullman, president of Eagle Forum, was critical of the draft platform’s quick adoption process.
“This process is not how the rules of the Republican Party claim the process is supposed to work,” she told National Review. “The rules say that we are an open and transparent party and that the delegates have historically had the opportunity to read, digest, and amend the platform, and they were not given this opportunity. And it is very disappointing.”