Donald Trump, his campaign and the Republican Party are in the midst of a transparently dishonest attempt to use the GOP’s 2024 platform, unveiled earlier this month, to transform him into a “moderate” on abortion. Unfortunately, many media outlets have bought into the party’s framing that the new platform “softened” Trump’s abortion stance. Nothing could be further from the truth, and no one should be fooled by this latest Trump deception.
“We proudly stand for families and Life,” states the new platform’s brief section on abortion. “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 odd capitalization reflects, as has been reported, that Trump personally edited the document.) In other words, the platform maintains that embryos are people with constitutional rights and must be protected under the law. This idea is the core of a radical anti-abortion movement that seeks to bestow “personhood” rights on fertilized eggs.
The former president intends this section to recognize due process rights for embryos.
It’s true that this new platform abandons some of the language of the party’s last platform, from 2016. That platform explicitly called for a national abortion ban and cited the same due process protections to call for “a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.” The changes have disappointed some parts of the Christian right. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in particular, has used his radio show and news site to promote the view touted by himself and other Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, among others, that Trump has unacceptably “watered down” the party’s position. For them, national action, including banning the abortion pill mifepristone, remains a top priority.
The new paragraph, however, is a characteristically Trumpian obfuscation, an attempt to please his base and confuse other voters who might have heard claims over the past several months that Trump, supposedly bucking his base, is resistant to a national abortion ban. A casual reader might even see the new platform’s sentence on the 14th Amendment as referring to constitutional rights for people, not embryos.
Yet we know from close Trump ally Ralph Reed, the head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, that the former president intends this section to recognize due process rights for embryos. And we also know that the paragraph’s final sentence, opposing “late term” abortions, is meant to signal to the Christian right that a national ban is still on the table. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, confirms the ticket’s anti-abortion bona fides. Vance has compared abortion to slavery, opposed any exceptions for rape or incest in abortion bans, and urged Ohioans to vote against an abortion rights amendment in 2023, arguing it was “not about freedom.” (It passed.)
“The Republican Party platform makes clear the unborn child has a right to life that is protected by the Constitution under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment,” Reed wrote. “While aspirational, it applies to both the states and the federal government. The proposed ban on late-term abortion also implies federal as well as state action.”
No one should forget that Trump has bragged about how ‘pro-life’ his presidency was. Perkins’ persistence signals that the leaders of the Christian right will not tolerate the party going soft on abortion, and that if Trump regains power they will use their clout within the party to push for the most draconian abortion bans and restrictions possible. In the meantime, criticism from Perkins and others also helps Trump to position himself, preposterously, as bucking his extreme supporters. But no one should forget that Trump has bragged about how “pro-life” his presidency was, particularly his crucial role in appointing three justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Trump knows his party’s quest to outlaw abortion nationwide is wildly unpopular and a potentially devastating drag on his ability to attract voters beyond his MAGA base. In April, the Pew Research Center found that 63% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a 4-point increase since the Supreme Court struck down Roe two years ago. Last month, Gallup reported that a record 32% of voters said they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion — a position that is “markedly higher among pro-choice voters than it was during the 2020 presidential election cycle, while pro-life voters’ intensity about voting on the abortion issue has waned.” Finally, a Public Religion Research Institute analysis this month similarly found that 37% of voters in seven battleground states said they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion, with Democrats more likely to answer this way (at 46%) than Republicans (at 34%). Leading the way among those litmus test voters are Gen Z voters (47%), who are more likely by at least 10 percentage points than any other generation to say they would only cast a ballot for a candidate who shares their abortion position. Trump’s gaslighting comes amid his base’s march to transform America into a dystopia governed by anti-abortion fanatics, eager to impose their will in hospitals, doctor’s offices and bedrooms. While the 2024 platform may be shorter than its predecessor, newfound brevity does not equal altered ideology. The GOP remains a party of anti-abortion radicals, and no document is going to change that.
Sarah Posner
Sarah Posner is the author of "Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind." 
