It’s no surprise that the Republican Party is pulling out of its platform, after decades, of supporting a national abortion ban.
Not Donald Trump and the new vice presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance from Ohio, have had some epiphany and renounced their long-standing opposition to reproductive rights. Even more so if party leaders understand that such a stance risks alienating millions of voters in conservative and swing states who support reproductive rights. States that voted for Trump in 2020, such as Ohio and Kansas, more recently voted to add abortion rights to their state constitutions or reject measures that would ban them after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022.
So the party dropped a seemingly innocuous statement into its platform, which delegates approved this week at the Republican National Convention, about standing for “family and Life.” That sounds reasonable, but it’s more sinister than it seems.
The statement is followed by the observation that 14Th The Amendment “guarantees that no person shall be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that States shall be free to enact Laws protecting those Rights.” Then he declared, “After 51 years, because of us, the power has been given to the State and to choose the People.” This is a reference to the Supreme Court taking away the federal right to abortion.
It may be subtle, but it clearly signals that the party has not changed its values. This is a call for more fetal personhood laws, which may be more extreme and far-reaching than abortion bans. This law gives all the same rights to the fetus in the uterus – and sometimes just the fertilized egg – to anyone walking around. More importantly, the rights of the fetus outweigh the rights of the pregnant woman.
It is very sad that there are people who support laws that take away the rights of women from pregnant women while giving that status to the fetus. Like all antiabortion statutes, they turn pregnant people into little more than incubators.
There are already 18 states that have some type of fetal personhood law or fetal privacy protections established by court decisions, according to Pregnancy Justice, an organization that advocates for the rights of pregnant women. Depending on how it is interpreted, personality laws can affect access to abortion, in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures and certain types of contraception such as the IUD because they sometimes act after fertilization.
The law was upheld by Roe vs. Wade. Now that Roe has been overturned, it is possible that the law could be used to ban abortion. For example, just days after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, abortion services were halted in Arizona because it had a law on the books that gave personality to fetuses, embryos and fertilized eggs. Lawyers successfully got part of the law blocked in federal court. There are likely more legal battles ahead here and in other countries with similar laws.
But the reason to worry about the law is that it can be used not only to prevent people from having abortions, but to criminalize people who get pregnant for falling down stairs, even using legal drugs or abortion. “You’re turning the person into a walking crime scene,” said Karen Thompson, Pregnancy Justice’s legal director.
The personal law of the fetus can also stop the IVF procedure. The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling this year that frozen embryos have the same rights as children sparked a national uproar and prompted the state’s IVF clinics to abruptly halt service. (Alabama later passed a law protecting IVF providers from civil and criminal liability for the loss of embryos during treatment.) Interestingly, the GOP platform also states that the party supports IVF.
Trump continues to take credit for putting three justices on the Supreme Court who were instrumental in overturning Roe vs. Wade. Although he tried to deny his past support for a national ban, he refused to tell Time magazine in April that he would veto the ban if he became president. Her colleagues fought Ohio ballot measures last year that enshrined abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution. He signed a letter from a group of Republican senators and members of Congress last year calling on Atty. General Merrick Garland to implement part of the moribund 19Th century law representative, the Comstock Act, which could be used to ban the mailing of abortion pills.
The new statement on this platform is only a change in language, not value. The GOP will not protect women’s right to control themselves. And voters don’t have to think otherwise.
