The press has pointed to the near erasure of the word abortion from the new Republican platform as evidence that the mind and soul of the Republican party now reside in the body of Donald J Trump. The document omits the right’s top-priority goal of a federal abortion ban and replaces it with Trump’s preference to let the states do the dirty work. Missing too is the holy grail of the antiabortion movement: a “human life amendment,” which would extend to fetuses and embryos the constitutional protections that were seized from pregnant people when the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022.
The consensus is that the changes from the 2016 platform, which was used in the 2020 elections, to the 2024 version subordinate the Republican party’s long-held principles and strategies – not just on abortion but also on trade, entitlement cuts and same-sex marriage – to the transient political needs and desires of its leader.
