A small but vocal contingent on the right is frustrated with the new Republican Party platform. There isn’t much they can do about it.
Even as anti-abortion groups largely lined up behind former President Donald Trump’s platform on Monday, some prominent and rank-and-file evangelicals criticized the language for backpedaling on the GOP’s longstanding promise to use the federal government to stop abortion.
“The 2024 platform is a decent statement of campaign priorities, but not necessarily the enduring principles of a party,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “Unfortunately, the process was unbecoming of constitutional conservatives which did not allow the document to be amended or improved.”
Though no one connected to the platform committee’s proceedings in Milwaukee publicly criticized the former president or threatened to withhold support, some delegates expressed frustration at the way the platform was handled. The document — which was whittled down from 66 pages in 2016 to 16 pages this year — was developed behind closed doors and hastily presented to and approved by delegates in just a few hours Monday morning.
The platform language adopted by delegates did, however, mollify many anti-abortion advocates who believe the federal government should play a role in setting abortion policy by gesturing to the 14th Amendment, which conservatives have long argued protects life starting at conception. Six prominent anti-abortion organizations signed onto a letter in which they called the new party platform “a set of common-sense promises that will Make America Great Again” and said that it reflected Trump’s commitment to “protecting life and promoting the family.”
Still, after the platform’s adoption, Perkins worked to gather support for a minority report he and others argued is more representative of where the party has historically been on abortion. Their report, in part, calls for the passage of the Human Life Amendment, which proposes to amend the Constitution to say that life begins at conception and establish legal protections for fetuses that could undo abortion protections in Democratic-controlled states.
“In no season, under no rationale spurred by the exigencies of a political moment, can or should we abandon the high principles that have created and sustained this party,” the report says. “These are issues for the ages and not for any single cycle in our national life.”
