MILWAUKEE (LifeSiteNews) – Delegates to the Republican National Convention gave final approval Monday to a pared-down Republican Party platform that moves the party to the political center, much to the anguish of pro-life activists.

As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, former president and 2024 nominee Donald Trump and his allies drafted and pushed a dramatically shortened platform that, among other changes, 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. It passed the Platform Committee 84-14 last week in a process insiders said was rushed to quash resistance.

Various pro-life activists expressed hope to resist the change, with more than 100 pro-life thinkers, activists, and organizations signing a joint letter urging restoration of the old language. Such efforts collapsed, however, in the wake of Saturday’s shooting at a Pennsylvania Trump rally that grazed the candidate’s ear, killed one attendee, and critically wounded two others.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who represented a group of conservatives hoping to submit a minority report reflecting the views of those who did not support the changes, told Politico that he and other conservative activists had planned to escalate their fight, but the attack changed the situation.

“Given today, and everything that has occurred, if the opportunity were there, we wouldn’t take it at this point,” he said. “Don’t take our silence as being indifferent to what took place. It’s just timing.”

So delegates quickly finalized the new platform’s adoption on the first day of the convention, The Washington Post reported, ignoring protests that supporters had “blood on your hands” from pro-life protesters outside the day before. 

Sarah Fields, president of the Texas Freedom Coalition, shared Monday a message from an unnamed friend serving as a delegate to the RNC, who said, “We had people try to go to the microphones to challenge the platform and the mics were turned off. Rules and platform have been adopted as is, no changes and no floor fight. The mics have been turned off and they didn’t allow the opportunity for it to be challenged. Rules and platform are done and have been adopted.”

“The president is the leader of the Party and he has built unity because of his winning record and his winning vision for the future, and he’s put together a team efficient at executing for him,” RNC spokesperson Danielle Alvarez told the Post. “This team has gone and built consensus and spoken with delegates and made sure the support was there.”

Presidential son Eric Trump, husband of RNC co-chair Lara Trump, justified the changes to NBC News on the grounds that “that’s reflective of my father and what he believes in,” and “my wife Lara who runs the RNC and what she believes in.”

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 debate performance has unleashed widespread panic over his true health and odds against Trump, including calls to replace him as the nominee that Biden has so far resisted.

Polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate a slim popular-vote lead for Trump in the November election, and, more important, leads in swing states translating to an Electoral College advantage over Biden.