The dissenting delegates specifically protest the new platform’s failure to support a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution that would give legal protections to fetuses and embryos, a provision that has been in past party platforms. They also protested the platform’s failure to explicitly “call for the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection application to children before birth.”
The 2024 platform dramatically shortens the discussion of abortion from the 2016 document, even dropping a prior call for a national ban on abortion after the 20th week of gestation. “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,” it says.
Some antiabortion activists applauded the mention of the 14th Amendment, because it echoes past platform language that argued that embryos and fetuses were entitled to due process protections from the moment of conception, an argument the party has long sought to enshrine explicitly in the Constitution. Others have pointed out that the language suggests that states can also legally choose to allow abortions, a position that Trump himself has embraced.
“This is the only way that delegates can express their support for the platform’s longtime stance defending the unborn,” Perkins said. “There is a reason the media was not allowed in the room. The process was more befitting of a third-world dictatorship than the Republican National Committee.”
The platform was passed Monday in an accelerated process, closed to the press, that did not allow for amendments after Trump remotely addressed the gathering in Milwaukee. The vote on the platform committee was 84-18, with those opposed falling short of the 25 percent needed under the party rules to issue a formal “minority report” to the full convention.
The 2024 document abandoned decades of tradition within the party for a much shorter and at times more vague statement of policies. Rather than oppose same-sex marriage, as past documents have done, the new platform says only “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage.”
The 2024 platform continues to express support for limits on abortion. “We proudly stand for families and Life,” the document reads. “We will opposed Late-Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF.”
The conflict is unlikely to subside inside the party, prompting Trump’s allies to make changes for the convention process in 2028. In separate meetings this week, the convention rules committee changed the threshold for a issuing a formal “minority report” at the 2028 convention to 35 percent of the delegates, up from 25 percent, according to a person familiar with the change.
