(Article by Calvin Freiburger republished from LifeSiteNews.com)
The platform, drafted before President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from reelection and given final approval without updating it to reflect that Biden has been replaced as presumptive nominee by Vice President Kamala Harris, spans 90 pages, casting a favorable light on the Biden-Harris administration’s record and laying out extensive plans on a range of issues for a second term.
Its “Reproductive Freedom” section (starting on page 48) begins by condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s “extreme” 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade. As a result, it says, “more than 20 states have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans – many of which include no exception even for rape or incest – that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.”
Overturning Roe “has also had devastating consequences for families who have suffered the heartbreak of infertility,” it adds, by opening the door to state bans on in vitro fertilization (IVF), without acknowledging that Republicans from state legislatures all the way to presidential nominee Donald Trump rushed to protect IVF – to the consternation of pro-lifers who have grave concerns about the practice’s mass destruction of embryonic human beings.
By contrast, the platform touts Democrats “fighting back to restore reproductive freedom for every woman in every state,” with a recap of the administration’s “whole-of-government” campaign to preserve abortion-on-demand through executive orders, health regulations, legal advisories, and more. In particular, it highlights “defending access to emergency medical care, including clarifying that federal law on emergency care preempts state abortion bans, educating patients on their rights, making it easier for patients who have been denied emergency care to file a complaint, and ensuring hospitals meet their legal obligations to offer care.”
That passage refers to the administration’s lawsuit arguing that the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires emergency room doctors to commit abortions that would otherwise be illegal under state law. Republicans argued that the White House misread and misapplied EMTALA in numerous ways, including that the law does not require procedures that violate state law, does not mandate services a particular hospital does not offer, and in fact requires hospitals to provide care for preborn children.
The platform then declares that if Trump returns to office, he “will ban abortion nationwide. And his allies plan to ban medication abortion nationwide, without Congress or the courts, by enforcing a law from the 1800s, including prosecuting women and doctors for sending or receiving medication abortion in the mail.” In fact, Trump has consistently said over the past several months he wants all future abortion battles left to individual states, going so far as to eliminate the Republican Party platform’s longstanding support for banning abortion nationwide, although he has sent mixed signals on what he would do about Biden’s abortion pill rules.
“With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again,” the section concludes. “We will strengthen access to contraception so every woman who needs it is able to get and afford it. We will protect a woman’s right to access IVF. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment. And in his second term, President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion, appoint leaders at the FDA who respect science, and appoint judges who uphold fundamental freedoms.”
The platform underscores the choice facing pro-life voters in November between a GOP that has diminished pro-life enthusiasm with its work to dilute the pro-life cause and a Democrat Party as radical as ever on the issue, which is expected to leave most pro-lifers resigned to accept Trump as preferable to the alternative.
National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH currently indicate that Harris continues to lead Trump in both national polling and Electoral College projections since replacing Biden.
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