The Republican Party has made a significant shift in its official stance on abortion, omitting a national abortion ban from its platform for the first time in 40 years. This change aligns with former President Donald Trump’s preference to leave abortion regulations to individual states. This decision comes as 14 states have already enacted near-total abortion bans following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which ended the federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion.
The new policy platform, the first since Trump won the White House in 2016, is notably slimmer, reduced from 66 pages to just 16. In the 2020 election, the party did not adopt a new platform. The document, approved in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the party will hold its convention next week, includes many slogans familiar to Trump supporters. For instance, it advocates for increased oil production with the phrase “drill baby drill.”
The 20-point plan, written in all-capital letters, outlines an agenda that includes pledges to “seal the border and stop the migrant invasion,” continue building a border wall, “end inflation and make America great again,” enact tax cuts for workers, and make college campuses “safe” by deporting so-called “pro-Hamas radicals.” The platform also criticizes policies that empower transgender individuals, particularly their involvement in sports, and promises to repeal emissions regulations on gas vehicles and build an “Iron Dome,” referencing Israel’s anti-missile defense system. It also pledges to ensure “election integrity” with new voting restrictions, end “gender insanity,” stop “woke” government, and protect free speech online. Additionally, Republicans expressed a willingness to welcome greater political participation from U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and Guam.
On the topic of abortion, the policy document begins by stating that the president would support the 14th Amendment, which generally provides the right to due process. “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,” it says. Anti-abortion activists have long argued that the amendment should be interpreted to include fetuses in utero, thereby guaranteeing “personhood” rights. Such an interpretation could make many aspects of in vitro fertilization (IVF) illegal, similar to how Alabama’s Supreme Court threw IVF into turmoil this spring.
The document continues, “After 51 years, because of us, that power [to regulate abortion] has been given to the States and to a vote of the People.” It adds that Republicans would oppose “late-term abortion” and support “mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF.”
The aspirations of those who helped craft the president’s platform on abortion are significantly more radical than what the policy document lays out. Kristi Hamrick, a representative of Students for Life who has been working with the Trump campaign, said activists are already considering how a prospective second Trump administration could advance these goals. “If we de-tangled and cut out the cancer of abortion and abortion-related programming from our federal budgets, we can have a healthier budget and a life-affirming budget,” Hamrick told Catholic News Agency (CNA). That work would, in Hamrick’s words, constitute “a very vibrant and vigorous term” for anti-abortion activists.
In communications to the broader public, anti-abortion activists have generally leaned toward more ambiguous language about their goals. Popular support for abortion rights has risen since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. A national poll released this week by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research finds a solid majority of Americans oppose a national abortion ban, and a rising number support the procedure for any reason.
Democrats responded to the new Republican platform by pointing out that the architects of the 20-point plan were also connected to the controversial Project 2025, a plan Trump has publicly disavowed but shares a joint vision with the president’s statements. “Trump is so desperate to distance himself from Project 2025 as the American people are grappling with the terrifying truth about his second-term agenda that he and his team overhauled the Republican platform process to keep the public and the press in the dark, all caps-ed 20 bullet points behind closed doors, and blasted it out to divert attention from his real plans,” said Democratic National Committee press secretary Emilia Rowland.
Rowland continued, “The American people know that Trump wants a nationwide abortion ban and they know the only thing standing in the way of Trump’s terrifying second-term agenda is re-electing President Biden and Vice-President [Kamala] Harris in November.”
The Republican National Committee’s move to adopt a party platform that reflects Trump’s position opposing a federal abortion ban and ceding limits to states marks a significant departure from the party’s stance over the past four decades. Trump imposed his priorities on the RNC’s platform committee as he seeks to steer clear of strict abortion language during his campaign, even while taking credit for setting up the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Trump appointed three of the six justices who voted in the majority to overturn the 1973 precedent that established a national right to have an abortion.
The scaled-down platform, with limited specifics on many key Republican issues, reflects a desire by the Trump campaign to avoid giving Democrats more material for their warnings about the former president’s intentions if he wins back the White House. President Joe Biden’s campaign has repeatedly highlighted the “Project 2025” document produced by Trump allies as well as Trump’s own promises to impose wide-ranging tariffs, replace thousands of government workers with party loyalists, and stage the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
The policy document sticks to the party’s longstanding principle that the Constitution extends rights to fetuses but removes language maintaining support for an “amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” a passage in the party platform first included in 1984. It asserts, “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.” The document also noted “that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”
Anti-abortion advocates who had criticized the Trump campaign’s efforts leading up to the platform committee’s meeting largely fell in line. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, praised the committee for reaffirming “its commitment to protect unborn life through the 14th Amendment.” Dannenfelser stopped short of endorsing the document’s reflection of Trump’s view that the matter rests entirely with states. Under the 14th Amendment, “it is Congress that enacts and enforces its provisions.”
The platform committee began its meeting a week before the start of the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, where Trump is scheduled to accept his third straight nomination for president. The platform is a statement of first principles traditionally written by party activists. In 2016, the platform included an endorsement of a 20-week national ban. Trump had supported federal legislation in 2018 that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, though the measure fell short of the necessary support in the Senate.
Trump this year has faced months of Democratic criticism over abortion as Biden’s reelection campaign has highlighted that Trump nominated half of the Supreme Court majority that struck down the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. In promoting the platform document, the campaign released a statement highlighting 20 issues it addresses, including immigration, the economy, energy, taxes, and crime, but omitted any mention of abortion in the subject titles.
Among the vocal abortion opponents on the platform committee, some say the aspiration of a federal ban on abortion after a certain stage in pregnancy must remain a party principle, even if it’s not an immediately attainable policy or one that necessarily helps the Trump campaign in November. “I see that as problematic. We still need these principles clearly stated. Some of these battles are not over,” said Iowa state Rep. Brad Sherman, a platform committee member who supported Trump’s winning Iowa caucus campaign in January and also supports a federal limit on abortion.
Conservative activists who were accustomed to having a seat at the table fumed beforehand over what they said was a secretive process for selecting committee members and the meeting taking place behind closed doors. “For 40 years, the Republican Party and the GOP platform have massively benefitted from an open and transparent process,” said Tim Chapman, the incoming president of Advancing American Freedom, a foundation headed by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump’s campaign has sought to reshape the Republican National Committee into a campaign vessel. It signaled in a memo last month from senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles that “textbook-long platforms … are scrutinized and intentionally misrepresented by our political opponents.” Trump ally Russ Vought is serving as the policy director of the Republican Party’s platform writing committee while also leading the effort to draft the 180-day agenda for Project 2025, a sweeping proposal for remaking government that Trump said he knew “nothing about” despite having several former aides involved.
After the 2022 midterm elections, Trump blamed Republicans who held strict anti-abortion positions for the party’s failure to secure a larger House majority. He has since been critical of the most stringent abortion bans in individual states. An AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2023 found that about two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The poll also found that 6 in 10 Americans think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.
Source: Associated Press, The New York Times
