Social conservatives push Trump to back federal role on abortion
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[July 03, 2024]
By James Oliphant and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading U.S. anti-abortion group on Tuesday
warned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump not to water down
language in the party platform on abortion restrictions, the most
visible sign yet of a widening fissure between Trump and social
conservatives on the issue.
The reproach by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie
Dannenfelser comes as party members head to Milwaukee to draft the
platform, which serves as a statement of policy principles, ahead of
what is intended to be a national show of unity at the party's
convention this month.
For weeks, anti-abortion activists have been expressing concerns that
the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee would work to
weaken language in the platform by eliminating any reference to a
federal role in restricting abortion.
Trump has said the issue should be left solely to state legislatures in
the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 that gutted
constitutional protection for the procedure. He has argued that is a
more politically tenable position, with polls showing a majority of
Americans broadly backing abortion rights.
In a statement on Tuesday, Dannenfelser said the longtime, battle-tested
alliance between the grassroots anti-abortion movement and the
Republican, or GOP, Party was in jeopardy.
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"If the Trump campaign decides to remove national protections for the
unborn in the GOP platform, it would be a miscalculation that would hurt
party unity and destroy pro-life enthusiasm between now and the
election," Dannenfelser said.
Members of the Republican Party's platform committee are scheduled to
meet privately in Milwaukee ahead of the July 15-18 convention, where
Trump will be formally tapped as the party's presidential nominee for
the Nov. 5 election against President Joe Biden, a Democrat who is
campaigning in favor of abortion rights.
In her statement, Dannenfelser suggested that anti-abortion groups were
being shut out of the process of crafting the platform.
"We are now just two business days away from the platform committee
meeting and no assurances have been made," she said. "Instead, every
indication is that the campaign will muscle through changes behind
closed doors."
Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said no
definitive decisions had been made on the platform's contents.
"The platform committee has yet to convene to discuss what language
should be in the final document," Alvarez said. She did not respond to
questions about whether the anti-abortion groups have a say in the
process.
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![](../images/070324PIX/news_l26.jpg)
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, is
pictured outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in
Washington, U.S., May 22, 2019. REUTERS/Yasmeen Abutaleb/File Photo
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EVANGELICAL PRESSURE
Last month, a bevy of anti-abortion advocates, including prominent
evangelical Christians such as Ralph Reed and Tony Perkins, sent a
letter to Trump sharing concerns similar to Dannenfelser's.
They called on the campaign to ensure that language be retained in
the platform that explicitly says a fetus has a "fundamental right
to life which cannot be infringed." They have also urged passage of
federal legislation to grant protection to fetuses under the 14th
Amendment of the Constitution, which outlines the rights of U.S.
citizens, and want a further so-called "human life amendment" added
to the Constitution.
Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council who served as
an evangelical adviser to Trump's administration, has launched an
online "platform integrity project" to apply grassroots pressure to
Trump and party leaders to keep the current abortion language.
A member of the RNC platform committee, Perkins sent a letter to RNC
Chair Michael Whatley on Monday complaining that advocates and the
media would be shut out of the platform deliberations under a "gag
rule" imposed by the party.
"The RNC Gag Rule heightens speculation that the GOP platform will
be watered down to a few pages of meaningless, poll-tested talking
points," Perkins wrote.
The Trump campaign in a memo last month to the platform committee
urged that it boil down the document to a statement of basic tenets
absent of "Washington jargon" and the "shackles of lobbyist
influence."
While Trump relied on strong support from evangelicals during the
Republican nominating contest, he has consistently maintained that
an extreme stance on abortion hurts the party's electoral chances
and has frowned upon six-week bans like those passed by states such
as Florida.
He has argued that his appointment of three Supreme Court justices
who voted to overturn the seminal abortion case Roe v. Wade stands
as proof of his anti-abortion bona fides.
(Reporting by James Oliphant and Nathan Layne; Editing by Colleen
Jenkins and Rosalba O'Brien)
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