The Republican National Committee proposed its 2024 GOP party platform in Milwaukee on July 8, and for the first time in forty years, this platform does not include support for a national abortion ban. Instead, the GOP’s anti-abortion positions are softened and many of the party's previous pro-life commitments have been removed. In particular, the committee stripped a key line included in every GOP platform since 1984: “The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” Instead, the platform states that the power to pass laws on abortion is the purview of the states. It only commits the GOP to opposing “Late Term Abortion” and it supports access to “Birth Control and IVF.”
In every presidential election year, Republican delegates from every state meet to form the Republican National Committee. This committee then puts together a GOP party platform, to be adopted at the Republican National Convention. Gayle Ruzicka, who has served as a delegate on every RNC since 1992, bar one, told me that the RNC process was different this year. Ruzicka is a national board member for Eagle Forum, the socially conservative interest group founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972. (It was Schlafly who originally fought for that 1984 line about a “fundamental individual right to life.”) In previous years, the committee process took several days, with sub-committees meeting, proposing amendments, and thoroughly discussing the platform before voting on it. When Ruzicka flew into Milwaukee last weekend, she was expecting several days of similar deliberation. Instead, it was all over before lunchtime on Monday.
On Sunday evening at orientation, delegates were introduced to those they were told would lead the sub-committees the following day. On Monday morning, however, the sub-committees weren’t convened or even mentioned. Instead, delegates had their phones taken from them—strangely, Ruzicka’s watch was taken, as well—and RNC officials rushed the proceedings.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called in to welcome the delegates, the draft platform was distributed for the first time, and the microphones were opened. Comments were limited to one minute. Most of the delegates were new, Ruzicka told me, people who “came prepared to do what they were told to do. They went quickly to the microphones and formed lines so that the rest of us couldn’t get there. They called the question after just a few statements. No discussion, none at all, about the unborn babies. Senator Marsha Blackburn was running the committee, and she was telling people they couldn’t speak.”
Ruzicka was shocked because she believed Blackburn was pro-life. “Tony Perkins [of the Family Research Council] got up and tried to make it a roll call vote and she told him he was out of order,” she said. “They wouldn’t take anything. No discussion. No amendments. It was shocking. Absolutely shocking. We tried to protest, but they wouldn’t let us. They wouldn’t even let us to the microphones. A few people got to the microphones on other issues and said they wanted to propose amendments, but they said that they weren’t taking amendments—that if you wanted an amendment, you could put it in writing. Of course, we were already voting, so it didn’t do any good.”
Ruzicka did see a number of other pro-life delegates. Two, Perkins and David Barton, have released statements expressing their disappointment in the platform and the process. Eighteen delegates voted against the platform. “Some people voted against because they hadn’t read it, some voted against it because it didn’t have pro-life language,” Ruzicka told me. “I voted against it for both reasons. I kept saying: I can’t vote for something I haven’t read! We had no input into the platform whatsoever. We were the platform committee, but we couldn’t talk about it because they had speakers going on the whole time.” It was obvious, she says, “that it had been pre-planned.”
“Every year at the RNC, we were seated in alphabetical order,” she noted. “This year, it was not in alphabetical order, and it was obvious to me when we stood to vote that they had surrounded the known pro-lifers—those who had been delegates and on the platform committee in the past—by people who were new. It was unbelievable. It was clear that they knew ahead of time how people would vote because of the way they seated us. We weren’t seated together so we couldn’t talk. But before noon, we were done. We were out around 11:30.” The delegates were thanked, told they were appreciated, and the RNC declared a success. “The only language included about abortion mentioned that we oppose late-term abortion,” Ruzicka said. “That’s not pro-life. The Democrats oppose late-term abortion for the most part.”
As I noted previously in First Things, the GOP appears to be pivoting. Trump claims to hold a federalist position on abortion, but in practice he condemns only states that pass pro-life protections—such as Florida—while saying nothing about states with permissive abortion regimes. During the presidential debate, he expressed his support for the abortion pill; Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, a potential running mate, followed suit in a Meet the Press interview. On July 10, two days after the RNC platform was released, Trump called North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum’s decision to sign a six-week abortion ban “an issue” and a barrier to choosing him as a running mate.
Perhaps the most depressing evidence of the GOP’s pivot is Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s decision to come out in support of Donald Trump’s new position on abortion. Rubio has long been a pro-life champion, but it appears he is moderating his position to go with the flow—or perhaps to make himself a viable option for the vice-presidential pick.
Gayle Ruzicka remains confident that the Republican party is pro-life. It is just the party platform that has changed this time around, she told me. She may be right. But there are worrying signs that Donald Trump is leading the party in a different direction altogether—and that soon, the decision facing voters may be between a pro-abortion party and a pro-choice one.
Jonathon Van Maren is the author of Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement.
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Image by Walt Disney Television, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
