Quick Update: Since beginning to write this article, former President Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt. Thankfully, Donald Trump survived, tragically, an innocent Trump supporter (a brave father and husband) was killed. The Personhood Alliance stands with the family of the man who was killed. We also stand with President Trump’ and his family as he navigates the minefield that is modern day American politics. Policy differences, no matter how fundamental and consequential should never lead to political violence.
(Washington, DC) – Party platforms are aspirational documents. They are outward-looking towards voters, promising to address the nation’s major problems, as well as inward-looking, guiding members of the party and party candidates with fundamental policy choices.
For 50 years, the Republican party promised to overturn Roe v. Wade and enact legislation at all levels to oppose abortion, including a human life amendment to the US Constitution. The combination was as logical as it was necessary for the protection of the preborn child. The GOP platform presented a cogent recipe for success: declare the principle that human life is sacred and that the duty of government is to guarantee this fundamental right, eliminate the judicial barriers existing at the time, and finally, enact legislative changes to enforce the legal protection of this fundamental right.
This week, the Republican Party abandoned its opposition to abortion as a matter of principle. Essentially becoming a pro-choice party. Pro-choice, not in the euphemistic meaning of the word, but in the literal sense. Under the new platform, the fundamental right is not the right to life, but the right of the people to choose at what point in human development a child must be protected by law.
If this proposed GOP platform stands, the GOP will have become the pro-choice party on abortion, while the Democrat party will be the pro-abortion party. Sadly, this will mean that neither major American political party will stand up for the right to life of the innocent preborn.
If this stands, it will be a political mistake of biblical proportions.
The Process
Last week, as the nation celebrated its independence, rumors began spreading that the GOP platform was undergoing significant revisions behind closed doors in preparation for the 2024 election. Grass roots Republicans and Pro-life leaders openly aired their concerns on social media that the process of shaping the new platform was being controlled by a select group of Trump campaign loyalists intent on eliminating the right to life from the party plank and from the political playing field.
When the changes were finally leaked, powerful social conservative players like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Center , who was on the platform committee, complained that they had been left out of the conversation. Platform committee members were given an option, rubber stamp Donald Trump’s new platform, or get kicked off the platform committee.
Overnight, the pro-life movement and it’s long term goals on the sanctity of life were discarded by Team Trump and his new Big Tent Republican Party.
Being the consummate deal maker that he is, Donald Trump has achieved the dream of every socially liberal Republican: to get rid of social conservatives who for decades have held politicians’ feet to the fire on matters of the utmost importance to middle America but hateful to the elite in the GOP. Arlen Specter must be rejoicing somewhere in the warmer regions of the afterlife.
The Previous GOP Platform
The GOP party platform used to include a well thought out and consistent section on abortion titled “Protecting Human Life”. That document carefully explained that the constitution was intended to protect the sanctity of human life and that the fundamental right to life could not be infringed. However, because of Roe v. Wade, the GOP pledged to work towards a “human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” The platform also stood against funding for Planned Parenthood, for the appointment of judges who support traditional values, against euthanasia and assisted suicide, sex selective abortions, embryo destructive research, and human cloning. All of that is now gone.
Please read the entire previous version of the GOP party platform, with the relevant portion on abortion starting on page 20 of this pdf file:
The Trump Endorsed GOP Platform
The brand new platform eliminates almost the entire pro-life agenda of the Republican party and makes this evident from the title of the section itself to the short talking points that follow it.
But even before diving into the relevant section, it is important to note that the new GOP platform does not mention the right to life or the abolition of the evil of abortion as one of its top 20 priorities. Instead, in Chapter 9 in a subsection titled “Government of, by, and for the people,” the platform states that “Republicans Will Protect and Defend a Vote of the People, from within the States, on the Issue of Life.”
Note that the new Republican Party of 2024 will not defend and vindicate the right to life of the helpless preborn child, no, the GOP will now defend the right of the people to vote at the state level on whether to strip away the right to life of the voiceless or to safeguard it. The fundamental right to life is no longer fundamental, but a choice up to the voters in the states. That is why it is accurate to state that, if the new platform is adopted at the GOP nominating convention, the official GOP position on abortion will have shifted from pro-life to pro-choice.
To be fair, the new GOP platform does attempt to raise the 14th amendment right to life, unfortunately that attempt is as ambiguous and inconsistent as the title itself and only clarifies the new platform’s complete lack of principle.
Vague
The new platform boldly states that the GOP will “proudly stand for families and Life”. What type of families (one man and one woman with children?) and what type of life (from conception, viability, birth?) is left up to interpretation and is unspecified. Even the most radical pro-abortion LGBTXYZ activist could agree with the GOP platform that, they too, stand for families and life, which is why if those terms are left undefined, they mean absolutely nothing.
Inconsistent
Next, the platform manages to contradict itself within one sentence. The GOP now apparently proclaims that the 14th Amendment simultaneously guarantees that “no person can be denied life or liberty without due process” and that the states have the choice to pass laws denying those rights. It would be like saying the accused has the right to a jury trial but the states have the choice to pass laws denying the right to a jury trial. It is simply nonsensical.
Mistaken Reading of Dobbs
Next, the platform explains that, because of “us”, which might mean the GOP, but probably means Donald Trump, the power has been given to the “States and a vote of the People.” However, Dobbs made it clear that whether to outlaw abortion was up to the people through their elected representatives at the local, state, AND federal level. Democrats are pushing with extreme force at the federal level, and if they manage to get a majority in Congress, no matter how slim, they will surely federalize abortion by making abortion-on-demand the law of the land. By abdicating the responsibility to fight for life at the federal level, the new Republican Party will surely elect an increasingly large number of pro-abortion Republicans who will inevitably vote with the Democrats on abortion at the federal level, making any gains at the state level absolutely useless. This is not conjecture. Democrats have been a mere few votes away from passing the FOCA Act since the Clinton administration. It is now called the Women’s Health Protection Act and in the last legislative session it had the support of 213 members in the House and 49 in the US Senate.
The new GOP platform means that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will be given free rein, in fact encouraged to enlist fellow pro-choice Republicans and you can bet plenty of suburban Republicans will choose the easy path of tossing the pro-life cause in the trash.
With this new GOP platform, the Freedom of Choice Act is almost guaranteed and with it, the end of the pro-life movement as we know it.
Birth Control and In Vitro Fertilization
Finally, the new platform is shamefully lacking any pro-life legislative agenda. It does not endorse a heartbeat ban, or the 15-week ban promoted by SBA Pro-Life America, or even a viability ban, not to mention a 14th amendment personhood bill, or a constitutional amendment. Instead, it promises to fight against partial birth abortion (which is already illegal at the federal level), and which of course ignores 99% of the abortions that end the lives of innocent children in America.
And as bad as the non-existent legislative agenda on abortion is, the real poison in the GOP platform is that it fully endorses the current practice of in vitro fertilization, which is completely unregulated in the United States and has resulted in millions of embryonic children being frozen and abandoned as well as untold numbers of women being injured during egg harvesting.
It is understandable that some people, Donald Trump included, see in vitro fertilization as a life affirming cure to infertility. But the fact of the matter is that for every beautiful child or grandchild brought into the world through in vitro fertilization, dozens of equally beautiful children and grandchildren are destroyed or kept in a cryogenic state. It is criminally ignorant or simply negligent for those laying out the agenda of the only viable conservative political party in America to ignore these well known facts, and replace them with an empty talking point.
Conclusion
The new GOP platform does not present a legislative agenda regarding the ongoing abortion holocaust. What used to be an imperfect but well thought out policy plan has been replaced with cheap talking points that offer no guidance or solutions to the ongoing evil of abortion. Instead, the GOP platform is now a license for pro-choice candidates to run as Republicans, and for principled pro-lifers to be pushed to the side and made irrelevant.
In many ways, the new party platform is a result of the pro-life movement’s institutional failures. For years, leading pro-life groups advocated for a pragmatic strategy of focusing on electing candidates to the US Senate and to the presidency who would revert Roe v. Wade while avoiding any direct confrontation in the trenches of the culture. And while the legal and political changes were important, the pro-life movement was often at war with itself, with those having a seat at the political table alienating the rank and file pro-life activists who wanted to push for change and truly fight the culture war in Main Street America, not just in Washington DC.
After decades of this fratricidal war, the promotion of a Washington DC-centric strategy became the dominant strategy in the pro-life movement. Then a politician came along who accepted the pro-lifer’s deal; he would give pro-lifers what they wanted, pro-life judges. However, when he did, and these judges ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, the pro-life movement was unable to rally to defend the recent gains against the highly enthusiastic pro-abortion movement.
Donald Trump could tell the political winds had shifted, and as soon as the results of the 2022 midterm elections came in, he began attacking pro-lifers. As everyone knows, Trump made a name for himself by saying “You’re Fired” and that is what he did to the pro-life movement. He had kept his promise from 2016 and he wasn’t about to be dragged down by a pro-life movement that was not a winning issue.
None of this excuses Donald Trump or those supporting the new GOP platform, who should know why the Declaration of Independence names the right to life as one of the unalienable rights. Neither should we ignore the fact that many tens of thousands of American Pro-Lifers sacrificed mightily for nearly 50 years to fight the culture of death and support pregnant mothers and they should get as much credit as Donald Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But the fact remains that the pro-life movement’s biggest and most professional organizations were incapable of winning the culture war, and without that, defeat at the polls should have been expected.
The pro-life movement faces a defining election with no apparent champion on our side except the knowledge that we are right in defending the innocent and that it pleases God.
May God have mercy on us.
Trump and Vance and the GOP platform have turned on the Right to life movement. I stand for the rights of the unborn and the born. I am a Christen and I read the Bible; l put my faith in GOD.
It’s time for all pro-lifers and abolitionists to DITCH the Republican Party! This year I’m voting for independent candidate Tom Hoefling. As far as I know, he’s the only abolitionist candidate running this year.
These arguments almost exactly parallel those on slavery following the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The article well points out that accepting a variety of state answers avoids the moral question and is thus pro-choice. “But you say this question should be left to the people of Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested in it. If this be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to say for himself whether he will have slaves.” Abraham Lincoln, Peoria speech, Oct. 1854
Trump is merely a patriotic political American, not a religious champion.
If The Pro-Life movement really needs to succeed, it must put all its effort into exposing, prosecuting and shutting down the abortion mills.
Exposing the atrocities being carried out on as many platforms and billboards throughout the country as possible and never backing down about the “horrific” content.
This is a war against women that needs to be graphically and factually pushed in the faces of all who claim to be Women’s Rights activists so that anybody, all men, women and children, who have eyes to see and ears to hear cannot refute the genocide that is being done in our neighborhoods.
If we are to succeed, we need to embrace rubbing the precious blood of our aborted babies in EVERYBODIES faces. War is hell…
Let’s work on media within the church and outside the church; changing people’s hearts to protect women and children, promote the positive work of crisis pregnancy centers and adoption, celebrating true femininity and responsible masculinity while changing laws. Let’s do more to advertise fertility awareness methods of natural family planning, which includes helping infertile couples significantly. Stop polluting our bodies and water supply with synthetic hormones and flushing dead babies down the toilet!
A GOP party platform that does not explicitly disavow and promote prosecution of the inhuman carnage of self indulgent, self centered, self esteemed parents supporters of their inhuman actions and those of their diabolical contract killers in the slaughter and poisoning of our nations children is entirely inacceptable. Citizens exterminated months before birth no longer need any of the other rights that the now thoroughly corrupted and cowardly, and disgraced Republican Party purports to uphold since only upon the right to life rests the need for all others. A party so useless as to fail to explicitly and unequivocally protect the lives of every single individual without exception simply because they are yet unable to defend against our efforts to kill them will never for a moment have my support if I have to stand against them alone. At least the opposition no longer engages in the self serving and cowardly dishonesty of the RNC in who they are and the inhuman carnage against defenseless children they actually support. Every resource of every branch of government must be brought to bear to end this killing no matter what Trump elites think. Why is no one asking why Trump still offers compromise with the means of this killing that under him will keep these lethal policies in place in perpetuity as they have been for most of my lifetime?
Yes, Lord, Jesus, please have mercy on our nation, especially those walking in such willful blindness.
First of all, I am offended by the upside down American flag. I would also mention that the federal government is no longer in charge of abortion, it’s up to individual states. It is to be fought in the states. Also, if you demand a federal law to protect babies, why is that different than planned parenthood? During all the questions that came from roe v wade, one happened up is to legislate the unborn babies are human beings. I am pro-life, but we have to start thinking outside the box. God bless you for all you do.
God created human life, and man WILL NEVER HAVE A RIGHT RIGHT TO TAKE INNOCENT HUMAN LIFE! NEVER COMPROMISE THIS.
Personhood alliance should call it for the rape it was. Jefferson Davis was a states rights man for abortion’s twin. To put it to the states is to strip the winds of inalienable from the sails of created equal.
Each of the signatories to that protest letter should march out of the GOP in protest. And do penance for not having called out Dobbs in the first place.