Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) records a video after a rally to mark the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, June 27, 2024, at the Capitol in Washington.
Donald Trump’s half-hearted attempts to distance himself from factions of his political base and party that are pushing for a national abortion ban are apparently convincing to some, despite the fact that the move is plainly a cynical political ploy, or disingenuous, at best.
CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NBC all reported this week that Republicans have “softened” their stance or language on abortion and same-sex marriage, following Trump’s lead.
But there’s been zero reliable indication that Trump or the GOP has any intentions of backing off their long-running campaign to ban abortions, restrict access even to contraception, or to consign LGBTQ people to a lesser class of citizenship.
For starters, we might recall that plenty of Republicans pretended that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a Democrat-manufactured political issue for years, even as others pushed, quietly and relentlessly, to restrict women’s right to abortion and reproductive health care. All of the current conservative Supreme Court justices refused to say whether or not they would overturn the decision. Then, perhaps suddenly or perhaps not, Roe v. Wade was indeed overturned on a summer Friday in 2022; today, Florida has a six-week abortion ban, even though women commonly discover their pregnancy after that window; South Dakotans are living under a total abortion ban that applies even in cases of rape; and many families struggling to have children no longer have access to in vitro fertilization providers in Alabama.
But we can set that history aside for now.
The actual changes to the GOP’s abortion platform amount to little more than minor language edits—semantics that allow the party to straddle both sides of the fence, given that their actual position is a clear loser with the public. Since Roe was overturned, anti-abortion advocates have lost every single race in which abortion rights appeared directly on the ballot, in red and in blue states, NBC reported in April; and polls continue to show that a significant majority of Americans support access to abortion.
In 2016 and 2020, the Republican Party platform demanded a national abortion ban, saying the “unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed,” and calling for a constitutional “human life amendment” that would apply to fetuses and embryos.
By comparison, the document released this week says:
“We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF.”
The language is intentionally difficult to parse (like the rest of the party’s platform). But first, it clearly approves the overturning of Roe’s 51-year-old precedent, which has produced a status quo where some Americans have no legal access to abortion or IVF right now. More importantly, the reference to the 14th Amendment is a clear tell.
That amendment, dating from the Reconstruction period, was intended to protect the human and civil rights of formerly enslaved Black people by mandating that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” In this context, the reference can only mean that Republicans endorse the perverse “fetal personhood” theory, which holds that those protections also apply to fetuses and embryos, or “unborn” persons.
Trump has said outright that this continual flip-flopping is pure political calculation.
And there’s no real way of getting around its logical conclusion, if one accepts the theory: If fetuses and embryos are legal “persons,” then the processes involved in IVF are likely criminal—as the Alabama Supreme Court has already held. And states can not only ban abortion at six weeks, like in Florida, but are arguably required to ban it altogether, like in South Dakota.
That’s apparently how many of the leading activists in the country who are seeking to end abortion understood the new language: “It is important that the GOP reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement after the “new” platform was released (emphasis mine).
“The Republican Party platform makes clear the unborn child has a right to life that is protected by the Constitution under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment,” Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition said, adding that the “language has been in the GOP platform for 40 years.”
No softening, and no real difference, in other words.
Moreover, reporting from CNN, the Times, and most major media shows that we’ve been here before: Trump wavered and waffled and refused to be pinned down in 2016 on his position on abortion and overturning Roe, before pivoting and taking a clear anti-abortion stance after winning his presidency.
During his 2016 campaign, The Washington Post published a news report titled “Donald Trump Took 5 Different Positions on Abortion in 3 Days.” A month earlier, Trump had actually done a 180 on abortion within the same 24 hours, saying he was in favor of “some form of punishment” against women who undergo the procedure, before reversing course hours later, after widespread condemnation.
He’s still doing it up to the present day. Last September, for example, Trump said on Meet the Press that a six-week abortion ban is a “terrible” idea. Then came the questions of what would be an appropriate time limit, and whether those restrictions should be set by states or the federal government. “I don’t, frankly, care,” he answered. NBC reported in April that “Trump has bobbed and weaved on abortion for the entirety of his political career,” pointing out that he had changed his stance (on leaving the issue to the states) that week, between Monday and Wednesday. And in May, Trump said he was open to allowing states to restrict even contraception and birth control, before walking back his statements just hours afterward.
Trump has said outright that this continual flip-flopping is pure political calculation. When asked why he reversed the pro-choice stance he held before running for office, Trump answered: “When those questions were asked, and that was many, many years ago, I wasn’t a politician.” And he has stated very clearly to other Republicans that they should modify their position because it’s a loser, rather than anything about religion, or women’s health or general welfare.
In sum, Trump has been quite clear that he doesn’t actually care about women’s rights. He will lie, dissemble, and mislead as necessary to win an election, and then turn around and hand his right-wing base whatever they want.
All that being said, Trump has been consistent about certain other things: He has “repeatedly said that he would allow states to restrict abortion care as much as they want to, including even tracking pregnancies,” PBS reported in May. He has repeatedly billed himself as the most pro-life president in history. And he has repeatedly told audiences of evangelicals, Christian nationalists, and anti-abortion activists that if he gets “in there, you’re gonna be using that power at a level that you’ve never used it before.”
Trump has also shown that he’ll follow through on those promises to Christian nationalists after winning office, despite what he might have told the general voting public.
Trump denied during the 2020 campaign that he was opposed to Roe or that the issue was on the ballot, even though he’d previously said the ruling would be “automatically overturned” by his appointees.
“It’s not on the ballot,” Trump said during a debate in 2020. “There’s nothing happening there.” He added that we didn’t yet know now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s views on abortion, even though they were fairly clear, even then.
Of course, Barrett and Trump’s other appointees have since joined in the opinion that overturned women’s right to abortion, and Trump has proudly proclaimed himself as the man who “broke Roe v. Wade.” Indeed, Trump has even said candidly that there is no need for further anti-abortion policy changes because current law allows for total abortion bans—and he’s correct, as even the liberal Supreme Court justices conceded in Dobbs. “As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions,” they wrote in dissent.
Dobbs’s reasoning also leaves room to abrogate the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage, as Justice Clarence Thomas argued. And the GOP’s latest platform, too, includes coded language revealing an intent to continue attacks not only on abortion, but also on birth control and LGBTQ people’s rights.
If we take a step back, or perhaps if we simply pay attention to Republicans’ actions and words, it’s entirely clear that Trump and the party have no real intention of backing off their campaign to restrict abortion as much as possible, and to curtail LGBTQ rights and access to contraception as well. Suggestions to the contrary are simply misguided, or something worse.
