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Do Republicans support a national abortion ban? You’ll get different answers depending on who you ask.
As GOP delegates from around the country converged on Milwaukee this week, a behind-the-scenes spat about the party’s embrace of the anti-abortion right came to the forefront during policy drafting. Originally having contained a call for a national abortion ban, the platform’s final draft omitted that language, which would have been a departure from decades of party orthodoxy calling for the issue to be in the hands of state governments.
On Wednesday, it spilled out into public view as a major anti-abortion group took aim at Eric Trump.
The ex-president’s son indicated that he saw abortion rights as a comparatively minor issue in the face of others such as inflation. Speaking on NBC News, he was asked directly why the platform omitted support for an abortion ban.
“My father has always been there on those issues,” claimed Eric Trump. “That’s reflective of my father and what he believes in… and my wife Lara who runs the RNC and what she believes in. At the end of the day, this country has holes in the roof, and you’ve got to fix those holes and stop worrying about the spot on the wall in the basement.”
When asked about the RNC and his father no longer standing against abortion or for marriage between one man and one woman, Eric Trump compares trying to save the lives of babies and standing for biblical marriage as “worrying about spots on the wall in the basement.”
— Tom Buck (Five Point Buck) (@TomBuck) July 16, 2024
Wake up,… pic.twitter.com/Mgt5keyIGm
That comment elicited a scathing response from Students for Life Action.
“If anyone should understand firsthand how a culture of death that minimizes people’s humanity can lead to terrible consequences, it should be the Trump family,” a statement said. “Republicans need to do better. If you can’t multitask and deal with mold in the basement and holes in the roof, don’t ask to take over the House and Senate and White House.”
Other Republicans on the scene Wednesday disagreed with the anger from social conservatives. They contended that the party’s platform did not oppose restrictions on abortion, though they gave no explanation for the change to the platform.
"They didn’t take it out, it’s up to the states now and also, Donald Trump added [protections for] IVF, contraception and birth control. I think it’s fantastic," Nancy Mace, a conservative congresswoman from South Carolina, told The Independent. "We’re still going to be a pro-life party, but we also support women."
The anti-abortion right remains skeptical, if cautiously optimistic.
An official with Students for Life Action, a youth-focused group opposed to abortion and IVF, explained that the group had concerns — but also firmly declared that the anti-abortion movement could “work” with the platform produced by the GOP, even as they said “no one” was asking for the document to be reduced down from dozens of pages to less than twenty.
Delegates who spoke about the RNC platform process described it as being rushed through over the objections of conservatives.
“They cut the mics and did not allow opposition,” one RNC delegate claimed on Twitter/X.
“I don’t think anybody was calling for it to be shorter. But there it is,” said Kristi Hamrick, a vice president of the group. “And you left a lot of things on the cutting-room floor. But it does condemn late-term abortion, and it does embrace the 14th Amendment, and those are things we can work with.”
She offered a less positive view of the comments above from Eric Trump.
“Frankly, unbelievably condescending and dismissive to say that the loss of 65 million lives is a ‘spot in the basement’,” said Hamrick, referring to figures of abortions performed over several decades.
“It’s callous, it is condescending, and it certainly is offputting to people who really are looking this week to Milwaukee with a lot of hope,” she continued. “So, you know, way to discourage some of your voters?”
Eric Trump’s comments aside, however, Hamrick’s comments will likely confirm the warnings that many Democrats have made in the wake of the final GOP platform being accepted: that the anti-abortion right has lost no ground with the changes to the party platform, which included the omission of specific language endorsing a national abortion restriction for the first time in 40 years.
Democrats have insisted that the deletion of that language is meant to paper over the party’s true intentions: the use of the 14th Amendment to extend “personhood” and due process rights to unborn fetuses. Doing so could effectively outlaw abortion in most cases without the use of congressional legislation.
The statement from Students for Life Action confirms that strategy, though whether it will (or even needs to be) embraced by the top of the Republican Party’s 2024 ticket is unclear. Trump himself has stated that he would not sign a national abortion ban into law, but hasn’t specifically stated his position on the idea of pursuing restrictions through legal fights. He did, however, allude to his views on Monday in an interview with Fox News.
Speaking of the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, Trump argued that the conservative plan to radically reshape the federal government went “way too far” on the issue of abortion restrictions. Project 2025’s plans for abortion rights go further than the GOP platform does, calling for an end to FDA approval for the over-the-counter abortion pill mifepristone and going after federal funding for organizations that provide abortions. The plan also calls for emergency contraception (such as the “Plan B” pill) to no longer be covered under healthcare insurance plans that are part of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage exchange system.
“From what I’ve heard, it’s not too far, it’s way too far,” said Trump. “They’ve gone, really, too far.”
But he also, once again, touted his appointments to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v Wade, ending federal protections for abortion care in 2022.
“I did a great job getting rid of Roe v Wade,” he declared. “I was able to get [the issue of abortion] back into the states.”
