This week, the draft platform for the Republican party was released.
Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, released the following statement:
Abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life. It is a devastating indictment of our national values that neither of the national political parties’ platforms will support federal protections for preborn children targeted for death by the abortion industry. The North Star of the pro-life movement remains equal protection for all as guaranteed to every person, regardless of their age or geography, under the 14th Amendment. In 2016 and 2020, the GOP platform embraced this truth by making it clear that “the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” Similar language has been a consistent part of the party platform since 1984. The draft 2024 platform, however, offers a watered-down statement that minimizes the hundreds of thousands of American children killed each year by abortion. This would be the first time in four decades that the GOP platform does not include language that supports federal protection for the preborn.
While the new language is correct that the “14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process,” it is wrong when it says that the “power” to decide life or death “has been given to the states and to a vote of the people.” When states discriminate against preborn children by denying the equal protection of their laws against homicide, they act unconstitutionally. There is no “states’ right” to permit elective abortion, which subjects thousands of American children each day to brutal, and for many, painful deaths. The policies proposed in this platform fall desperately short of justice.
The new platform says the party will “oppose late-term abortion” but does not mention opposing abortion at any other time. This false dichotomy suggests that older babies are somehow more valuable than younger babies. That is a morally and scientifically ridiculous position. Human life begins at the moment of fertilization. From that moment on, every human being has a right to life and equal protection. Holding that older preborn children deserve legal protection while younger children can be killed with impunity is destructive and false. A significant majority of abortions are performed early in pregnancy. More than 90% of abortions happen before 15 weeks gestation; opposition to “late-term” abortions alone would permit the vast majority of abortions to continue.
Research suggests that each year there are at least two million embryos – each one a unique human life – that are created via IVF but are never born, because they either die during the IVF process, are frozen indefinitely, or are directly destroyed. It is profoundly anti-life and barbaric to enact laws that allow the callous mass killing of preborn children, simply because they were created through IVF. Infertility can be an incredibly painful burden and is increasingly common. But the solution cannot be to deny legal protections to human embryos or to allow them to be frozen or killed at will in America’s IVF industry; however, this is what the draft platform suggests when it says that the party will be supporting policies that advance access to IVF.
The new platform also supports advancing “access to birth control” in the same plank intended to satisfy pro-life Americans. 51% of women seeking abortion in the United States reported that they had used a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant. Birth control contributes to an abortion mindset, where sex is totally disconnected from procreation, leading to abortion being used as a form of backup birth control.
The 2020 Democratic Party platform is also catastrophic for human life, as the current version reads, “We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion.”
A democratic majority that disregards the equal natural and constitutional rights of the minority has no legitimate right to rule. Democratic majorities cannot deny the right to life to powerless minority groups. And there is no more powerless group than the preborn. They cannot vote, they cannot protest, they cannot speak—but they are human beings. The fundamental right to life should not be subject to the whims of state legislatures or voter majorities. Roe v. Wade’s gravest error was not that it stifled democratic debate, but that it denied equal protection to human persons in the womb. I urge the delegates to both the Republican and Democratic conventions to reject their current platforms and adopt language that protects the fundamental, God-given rights all Americans are guaranteed by our Constitution.
The full passage in the new (draft) RNC platform on abortion and life reads:
We proudly stand for families and life. 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. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the states and to a vote of the people. We will oppose late-term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments).
By contrast, the 2016 and 2020 RNC platforms said:
The Constitution’s guarantee that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property” deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all” are “endowed by their Creator” with the inalienable right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.
We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare. We urge all states and Congress to make it a crime to acquire, transfer, or sell fetal tissues from elective abortions for research, and we call on Congress to enact a ban on any sale of fetal body parts. In the meantime, we call on Congress to ban the practice of misleading women on so-called fetal harvesting consent forms, a fact revealed by a 2015 investigation. We will not fund or subsidize healthcare that includes abortion coverage.
