A coalition of pro-life groups have banded together to ensure the Republican party platform stays strongly pro-life. Tony Perkins of the Family research Council has this to say about the effort:
The Republican National Convention may be next month, but conservatives aren’t waiting until then to start working on the GOP party platform. Together with a number of allies, FRC Action is joining a coalition to ensure that the document that is ratified in Cleveland is just as strong — if not more so — than 2012’s. Concerned Women for America, LAC, March for Life Action, and a consortium of Eagle Forum representatives along with platform delegates including Len Munsil (Arizona); Carolyn McLarty (Oklahoma); and David Barton (Texas) will be part of the group linking arms to fend off attacks to the core values of the Republican Party.
While most of us believe the GOP will remain committed to life, marriage, family, and religious liberty, the platform does need to be updated to reflect changes over the past four years.
SIGN THE PLEDGE: I Pledge to Vote for a Pro-Life Candidate for President
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) one of the co-chairs of the platform committee dropped by “Washington Watch” yesterday to explain to our listeners why this document is so incredibly significant. “We are telling the American people: ‘Here are the beliefs and the philosophies of the Republican Party.’ And we want people to understand what we would do with a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate… We’re going to make this a contest of philosophies and principles… When we run on our principles, we win in this country.” Had the 2008 and 2012 candidates run strongly on these values, the outcome would have been far different. Imagine how much better our country would be right now if it had been governed by these principles in the last eight years!
As Virginia said, “We want to give the American people a clear choice in this election. We believe that if we give the American people a clear choice and they vote for it… that we then will have a mandate from the American people to move forward with those principles.” (Click below for the full interview.) FRC Action and friends look forward to working with the delegates to pass a strong conservative platform showing a contrast with the Democratic Party’s extremist positions that have led to the moral and economic decline of the last eight years.
Below is the full text of the current pro-life platform in the Republican Party:
THE SANCTITY AND DIGNITY OF HUMAN LIFE
Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or fund organizations which perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. We oppose the non-consensual withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from people with disabilities, including newborns, as well as the elderly and infirm, just as we oppose active and passive euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Republican leadership has led the effort to prohibit the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion, permitted States to extend health care coverage to children before birth. We urge Congress to strengthen the Born Alive Infant Protection Act by exacting appropriate civil and criminal penalties to health care providers who fail to provide treatment and care to an infant who survives and abortion, including early induction delivery where the death of the infant is intended. We call for legislation to ban sex-selective abortions – gender discrimination in its most lethal form – and to protect from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain; and we applaud U.S. House Republicans for leading the effort to protect the lives of pain-capable unborn children in the District of Columbia. We call for a revision of federal law 42 U.S.C. 289.92 to bar the use of body parts from aborted fetuses for research. We support and applaud adult stem cell research to develop lifesaving therapies, and we oppose the killing of embryos for their stem cells. We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
We also salute the many states that have passed laws for informed consent, mandatory waiting periods prior to an abortion, and health protective clinic regulation. We seek to protect young girls from exploitation through a parental consent requirement; and we affirm our moral obligation to assist, rather than penalize, women challenged by an unplanned pregnancy. We salute those who provide them with counseling and adoption alternatives and empower them to choose live, and we take comfort in the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative initiatives.
James Bopp, Co-chairman of the Subcommittee on Restoring Constitutional Government for the Republican National Committee, emailed LifeNews the background of the pro-life position:
Since 1980, the Republican Party Platform has endorsed the adoption of “a Human Life Amendment” to protect unborn life and to reverse Roe v. Wade. Carl Anderson, now head of the Knights of Columbus of the U.S., and I drafted this plank, and it has remained the same and in the platform since then. In addition, I was Co-Chairman of the Subcommittee on Restoring Constitutional Government of the Platform Committee which readopted this platform plank this year.
In 1980, there were dozens of different versions of a Human Life Amendment then pending in Congress. The approaches included a state’s rights version, one reversing the right to abortion, one endorsing restoring personhood, one permitting abortion only to save the life of the mother and some allowing abortion in instances of rape and incest.
The Republican Party plank endorsing a Human Life Amendment does not take a position on which version of a Human Life Amendment should eventually be adopted. We leave that decision to Congress and the people of the United States at that time. Thus, we do not take a position on which exceptions should be included in a Human Life Amendment.
On the other hand, the Democratic National Committee has officially rejected an effort by pro-life Democrats to get the party to include them in its platform that calls for keeping unlimited abortions legal and paid for at taxpayer expense.
