Pro-Life Leaders Urge Republican Delegates to Oppose New GOP Platform

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A coalition of pro-life leaders is urging Republican delegates to speak out and oppose the GOP’s new platform that removed pro-life language, arguing that the defense of the unborn is a non-negotiable issue that underscores the fundamental values and principles of the party.

“I believe as Bible-believing Christians, we must stand for truth,” the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, one of the outspoken leaders, said this week. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence and several U.S. senators, including Missouri’s Josh Hawley, criticized the new platform. Nineteen members of the committee, including Perkins, issued a minority report.

The new document, passed this week with support from presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, is the first GOP platform since 1972 not to back federal protections for the unborn and the first since ’72 not to mention the word “unborn.” It removed language from the 2016 platform that read, “We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.” Similar language has been used on every Republican platform since 1984. 

Although the new platform opposes late-term abortion, pro-life leaders emphasize that the vast majority of abortions occur early in pregnancy, a critical issue that the platform fails to address.

The platform also, for the first time, includes support for contraceptives and IVF — two issues controversial within some conservative circles. 

Supporters of the new platform said it reflected the beliefs of Trump, who phoned the committee to support it.

“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,” the platform says. “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).”

Although the GOP platform has been unwaveringly pro-life for more than decades, “the party is departing from that,” Perkins said.

“I refuse to go with the winds of the culture,” Perkins said. “… Whether the current popular political party or candidate stands with that or not — I don’t care. I’m going to stand on truth.”

Perkins, a member of the platform committee, helped submit a minority report criticizing the committee’s leaders for not allowing amendments. The committee meeting was a “clearly choreographed and scripted process,” the minority report said. 

“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,” the report said.

The platform committee process “was more befitting of a third-world dictatorship than the Republican National Committee,” Perkins said.

Hawley said, “Life is a principle that unites Republicans.

“We have been a pro-life platform since 1976,” Hawley told Washington Watch. “… My concern is this platform seems to walk away from that.” 

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Axios that the new platform “has a lot of potential to hurt us.”

“It’s the one issue that could divide the Trump base from President Trump, Cramer said. “Right now, Republicans have enthusiasm for our nominee when the Democrats clearly do not for theirs.”

Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), James Lankford (Okla.), and Mike Lee (Utah) told Axios they, too, were disappointed in the new platform’s abortion language. 

Pence, who served during the Trump administration, called the platform a “profound disappointment to the millions of pro-life Republicans that have always looked to the Republican Party to stand for life. He encouraged GOP delegates during the party’s convention in Milwaukee to re-insert pro-life language. 

“I urge delegates attending next week’s Republican Convention to restore language to our party’s platform recognizing the sanctity of human life and affirming that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed, Pence said.

“The updated platform also cedes this fight to the states, leaving the unborn in California and Illinois to the far left’s extremist abortion policies, Pence said. “The right to life is not only a state issue; it is a moral issue, and our party must continue to speak with moral clarity and compassion about advancing the cause of life at the federal, state, and local level.”

Tamara Scott, an Iowa delegate and committee member, told WORLD there was a “big push from the Trump campaign to create a clear and concise document.

I think we can all agree with that, but it must also convey our core principles and carry the voice of authentic Republican grassroots, she said. “And this platform doesn’t do that.”

The 2024 platform also removed language opposing same-sex marriage, an issue that first entered a GOP platform in 1992. (A Trump spokesperson in 2019 said Trump supported same-sex marriage.)

Trump phoned the platform committee to endorse the new platform, WORLD reported. 

“The language that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed has been included for years, Gayle Ruzicka, a delegate and committee member from Utah, told WORLD. “[Pro-family activist] Phyllis Schlafly was responsible for getting that in many years ago. Of course, she’s no longer with us. And this year, they just took it all out. It’s embarrassing.”

Related Article: SBC President and Pro-Life Leaders Criticize GOP Platform Shift on Abortion

Meanwhile, six pro-life leaders, including seminary president Albert Mohler, Live Action’s Lila Rose, and March for Life Action’s Jeanne Mancini, released a letter on July 12 encouraging delegates to “restore the RNC’s pro-life platform.”

“For the first time in decades, the Republican Platform retreats on life,” the letter, released by Advancing American Freedom, reads. “… We encourage you to support the Platform Committee’s Minority Report, amendments that strengthen the pro-life resolve of the platform, and to vote down any platform that weakens the party’s pro-life stance.” 

Photo Credit: ©Getty Image/Anna Rose Layden/Stringer


Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.





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