Watered-down language on abortion in GOP platform upsets delegates

The GOP’s 2024 platform drastically differs from previous party platforms when it comes to the issue of abortion, prompting 18 delegates on the platform committee to draft a symbolic “minority report.”

The final vote for the party platform was 84 to 18. However, in order for dissenters to submit a formal “minority report” to the full convention, they must capture 25% of the vote.

Dissenting delegates are disappointed that the new platform does not include support to add a “human life amendment” to the Constitution, thus granting legal protections to the unborn, nor does the platform “call for the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection application to children before birth.”

The 2016 party platform went into great detail about how the party will protect the conscious objections of healthcare workers from partaking in abortions and call on Congress to enact a 20-week abortion ban.

However, the 2024 platform does not include language recognizing the sanctity of the unborn child and only goes as far as stating it is against late-term abortion. Meanwhile, the party celebrates that abortion rights have returned to be a matter decided by the states.

“We proudly stand for families and Life,” the platform stated. “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 party platform also includes its support for access to birth control and in vitro fertilization.

Dissenters argue that the GOP is watering down its staunch opposition to abortion that has been central to the party for years.

“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 dissenting delegates wrote.

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Former President Donald Trump has been adamant that the abortion issue should be left up to states to decide, having publicly opposed a national abortion ban.

Conservative delegates also complain that the 2024 platform fails to uphold a view of marriage that in previous platforms explicitly opposed same-sex marriage. Now, the platform does not make a distinction and says “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage.”