WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Conservatives continue to register disapproval with the Republican Party’s new platform dramatically weakening its commitment to the pro-life cause at the federal level, with a panel at the recent National Conservatism Conference agreeing that it fails to account for the ambitions of the abortion lobby.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, the Republican National Convention’s Platform Committee voted 84-14 in a closed-door session to approve a dramatically shortened platform drafted by allies of former President and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Among other changes, it cuts the GOP’s longstanding support for a “human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth” in favor of leaving abortion policy to individual states. The platform also endorses birth control (many common methods of which function as abortifacients) and embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization.
Numerous pro-life and conservative voices have sharply criticized the platform, which still awaits final approval at the convention next week. The National Catholic Register reports that more weighed in during the National Conservatism Conference’s “Beyond Dobbs” panel on Wednesday.
“The RNC platform, I’m sorry, it is the worst platform I’ve ever seen,” said Tom McClusky, a longtime pro-life activist who has worked for the March for Life, CatholicVote, and the Family Research Council. “The platform, to me, has always been a promissory note. This is what the Republican Party stands for, this is the ideals that we strive for, and we’ve lost that now.”
He added that the pro-abortion efforts of the Biden administration have “proven” that simply returning abortion to the states is unsustainable. “They’ve turned our veterans’ hospitals into abortuaries. They’ve turned our military into abortion travel services. They’ve taken the Department of Justice and gone after people who stand up for life. That is not something the states can stop. That is only something the federal government can do.”
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Former Trump administration Domestic Policy Council advisor Katy Talento concurred that backing away from pro-life efforts at the federal level is wrong, particularly at a time when the White House has been “quietly transforming every agency into Planned Parenthood.”
“I would strongly urge any hand-wringing politician worried about suburban women to read the FDA label before advocating for pill-pushing on demand,” she said. “The next woman bleeding out in the fetal position could be their daughter or their granddaughter.”
“It appears that there is little courage or appetite among our national leaders to try to protect unborn Americans with new federal laws,” she lamented.
Meanwhile, the Family Research Council has launched a petition to Republican National Committee Co-Chair Michael Whatley and Platform Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn backing a report signed by the minority of Platform Committee members who did not support the new document.
READ: Potential Trump running mate JD Vance says he supports ‘access’ to deadly abortion pills
The Republican Party’s previous promise to defend life “made its way into the platform of 1976, twelve decades after that original session in Philadelphia,” the statement reads. “That commitment to a human life amendment and a call for the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection application to children before birth has been repeated in every platform since and, by this declaration of principle, we extend it now.”
“In no season, under no rationale spurred by the exigencies of a political moment, can or should we abandon the high principles that have created and sustained this party, with God’s grace, into a third century,” warn the signatories, which as of this writing number nearly 20,000.
For the past year, Trump has worked to stake out a “middle ground” on abortion of closing the door on further federal action, urging state laws to contain exceptions for rape, incest, and “medical emergencies,” embracing IVF, and contrasting himself against Democrats’ support for late-term abortion and infanticide. The about-face has caused consternation among pro-lifers, while most continue to accept him as preferable to the Democrats’ abortion-on-demand alternative.
It remains to be seen what impact Trump’s efforts will ultimately have on pro-life turnout in November, but it comes as Democrat panic over incumbent President and presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance has unleashed widespread panic over his true health and odds against Trump, including calls to replace him as the nominee which Biden has so far resisted.
National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate a widening popular vote lead for Trump since the debate, with the former president’s leads in swing states translating to a seemingly durable Electoral College advantage over Biden.
The 2024 Republican National Convention is slated to begin on July 15 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and run until July 18. Pro-lifers interested in giving feedback to Republican leaders about its platform changes can find the social media accounts for the RNC and its co-chairs by clicking here, and for the convention’s social accounts by clicking here.