Republican Party leaders are meeting today to adopt the party’s national platform and the co-chairman of the platform committee predicts the panel will adopt a platform that is pro-life on abortion.
Presumptive nominee Donald Trump said in April that he “absolutely” wants to change the Republican party’s current pro-life platform to promote abortions in cases of rape or incest. But pro-life Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin says the current pro-life language will likely remain in place.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Fallin, the co-chair of the party’s platform committee, would only say that the party will “remain pro-life.”“I know that Donald Trump has said as a candidate that he believes in life, and I think the majority of the Republican Party does believe in life — that has been an important part and plank of our platform as a political party,” Fallin said.
The Oklahoma governor — and potential Trump running mate — said the platform’s decisions will be up to the party even though Trump is now the Republican standard-bearer.
“He will have representation — he’s going to be the presumptive Republican nominee — and certainly he will have a voice with his people, who will make recommendations, too,” Fallin said. “But in the end, this platform is driven by grassroots Republican people throughout the nation who will represent the very values and principles of the Republican Party.”
“Just to be clear, you can’t guarantee that the platform will make good on Donald Trump’s promise? It will be up to the people that make the decision, the 100 or so delegates?” Tapper asked Fallin.
“That’s right,” she responded.
Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins made the following comments saying pro-life GOP delegates will defend the pro-life platform:
“As in every other election cycle, the platform is an anchor that helps tether candidates to the core conservative principles that have long been at the heart of the GOP.
“The current RNC leadership continues to do a great job of ensuring the core values of life and family are protected. However, conservatives are prepared to defend the party’s guiding principles against liberal interest groups that have called for a weakening of the platform.”
Meanwhile, the proposed Democratic Party platform this year is more extreme than it has ever been, calling for a repeal of the Hyde Amendment and full-fledged taxpayer funding of abortion. The Democratic Party platform already supports legalized abortion on demand for any reason up until birth.
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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.
