MILWAUKEE — The Republican Party used to support federal protection of the unborn, and it explicitly opposed federal funding of abortion providers. As of this week, the party is now silent on those issues.
The party platform, approved by voice vote Monday at the Republican National Convention, also dropped its traditional statement, “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”
At the convention this week, elected Republicans and party delegates had no criticisms for the new plank on abortion — but their arguments generally ranged from incomplete to illogical.
Republicans defending the new abortion plank mostly argued that the new platform reflected the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Dobbs just sent it back to the states to let ‘We, the People’ decide,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said Monday at the convention. “I think it’s totally appropriate, and that’s pretty much what I think the platform says.”
This was the standard argument here in Milwaukee. “We spent 40 years saying this should be a decision of the states, and so it should be a decision of the states,” Florida state Rep. Randy Fine said.
“I think I think it was the Supreme Court that decided it should be the state has that decision,” said Fine’s colleague, Rep. Kevin Steele.
A dozen other delegates and alternates echoed that argument in service of the position that there is no proper federal role in abortion.
Both this premise and the conclusion are erroneous.
First, Dobbs did not state that abortion is up to the states. Dobbs stated that abortion is up to democracy — mostly up to legislatures. Roe had consecrated abortion as outside the reach of democracy and legislatures— alongside the freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.
Dobbs returned abortion to the realm of political matters — akin to drug legalization, speed limits, or tax rates. That is, Dobbs returned abortion to legislatures. Congress is a legislature.
There is nothing in Dobbs that would preclude Congress from banning abortions in some or most cases. A common conservative, pro-life view in recent years has been that Congress should ban abortion at viability, around 22 weeks, and should legislate on abortion at earlier stages. After Dobbs, Republicans advanced a 15-week ban, which would leave most abortions up to the states but ban a minority of them.
The new platform, and the new dogma that abortion is strictly a state issue, rejects this compromise position.
A second error in the leave-it-to-the-states position of pro-life lawmakers is that they ignore what the federal government is already doing to advance abortion. Even if abortion were strictly a state matter, a Republican president would need to take action to cease Uncle Sam’s abortion support.
The Biden administration has weaponized the Justice Department to prosecute pro-lifers on the thinnest possible charges. A Republican president will have to root out this corruption. The federal government subsidizes Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider, and a Republican president would need to end that.
The Biden administration has put the executive branch to work advancing abortion in a dozen ways — here’s a list of some of Biden’s executive actions — and a Republican president will have to end all of those.
Then a pro-life president would put the executive branch to work supporting mothers in carrying their child to term.
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The GOP platform shouldn’t go into every detail, but it could pledge to reverse Biden’s pro-abortion executive actions.
Instead, the Republican platform spits out some vague and incoherent language and sends the message that there is no federal role in abortion anymore. This raises the question of what the Trump-Vance administration would do. Would it work to protect the unborn or would it leave Biden’s pro-abortion policies in place?