PRO-LIFE POSITIONS DISCARDED FROM THE 2024 REPUBLICAN PLATFORM
PRESS RELEASE: CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE OF MASSACHUSETTS
We remain grateful that the hand of God stayed the assassin’s bullet, and will persevere in praying for President Trump and for our Republic.
The new 2024 Republican Party Platform will be voted upon tonight, Monday, July 15th, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
As a follow-up to our news release of July 12th, on the removal of pro-life language from the 2024 Republican National Platform, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts would like to provide, to the Catholic community and to all supporters of the right to life, a more detailed list of all the pro-life positions excised from the 2024 platform.
The following is a compendium of pro-life and pro-family positions from the 2016 and 2020 Republican Platforms which have now been deleted from the proposed new 2024 Republican platform:
- Support for the Human Life Amendment
- Opposition to the public funding of abortion
- Opposition to the public funding of Planned Parenthood
- Opposition to the sale of fetal tissue and fetal body parts
- Opposition to federal subsidies for healthcare which includes abortion coverage
- Support for the appointment of judges who respect the sanctity of innocent human life
- Opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide
- Support for legislation requiring fathers to support their children from conception to adulthood
- Support for the funding of ultrasounds and adoption assistance
- Support for state laws requiring parental consent, informed consent, waiting periods and clinic regulation
- Support for federal born alive legislation
- Opposition to infanticide
- Support for federal Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection legislation
- Support for federal legislation banning dismemberment abortions
- Support for federal legislation banning sex selection abortions
- Support for federal legislation banning abortions based upon disability
- Opposition to embryonic stem cell research and to the federal funding of such research
- Opposition to federal funding for the harvesting of human embryos
- Support for federal legislation banning human cloning
- Support for crisis pregnancy centers
- Support for the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which restricts the free speech of churches
- Opposition to U.S. v. Windsor, which removed the ability of Congress to define marriage in federal law
- Opposition to Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same sex marriage
- Support for the right of religious charities and adoption agencies to act in accordance with their beliefs
- Support for the conscience rights of those who refuse to serve same sex ceremonies
- Support for the conscience rights of doctors, nurses and pharmacists
- Support for a federal ban prohibiting the transportation of a minor across state lines to procure an abortion
The above is a longstanding, carefully considered, internally consistent and exactingly thorough list of 27 morally principled, politically defensible and practically attainable pro-life legislative and public policy goals, some of which are popular in polling, and most of which are politically serviceable.
Now, after many years of inclusion, they are all gone from the party platform—just gone. The fact that even politically popular pro-life positions have been abandoned, suggests that for the Trump Campaign, any reference to the right to life is now a political no-go area.
This comprehensive list has been replaced by a generic statement: “We proudly stand for families and life,” and an ambiguous reference to the Fourteenth Amendment, which, under current jurisprudence, does not recognize the legal personhood of the unborn.
This abandonment is arguably, the worst defeat in the modern history of the pro-life movement. Astonishingly, the leaders of some establishment pro-life organizations have actually endorsed the new platform.
Are they worried about Joe Biden being re-elected, or are these political actors masquerading as pro-life champions worried about being denied a seat at the table (or a place on the payroll) in a future Republican administration?
Despite British Prime Minister William Gladstone being their ally, Irish Home Rulers—who, 130 years ago, controlled more than 80 seats in the Westminster House of Commons—refused to permanently align themselves with a single other party, candidate or coalition partner.
That way, they reasoned, their support would never be taken for granted.
It is a lesson, apparently, which American pro-lifers never learned.
The following are email message boxes for the Republican National Committee and for the Office of President Donald J. Trump.
Please use them to register your opposition to a new Republican Platform which recklessly abandons a forty year consensus of determined commitment to the right to life.
Thank you.
