Trump’s platform is a gift for abortion foes. He hopes nobody notices

In the wake of Donald Trump’s desperate attempt to distance himself from Project 2025, the radical government blueprint developed by an extremist faction of former Trump administration officials and close allies, he and his team wrote the Republican Party’s official platform with an eye toward hoodwinking the public on abortion. While the platform includes calculated changes to the language around this key election-year issue, it is otherwise full-on, fascist Trump. This time around, Team Trump dropped language from the 2016 platform, which carried over to 2020, that stated the GOP believes “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.” That omission led a number of outlets to report—as CNN and The Washington Post have—that the platform “softens” language on abortion. It does not. The GOP is not backing away from its extremist anti-choice stance. That’s clear in this statement from the platform: 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 (fertility treatments). That affirms the extreme anti-abortion belief that the 14th Amendment “protects” the unborn. It’s the guiding principle behind the “fetal personhood” efforts anti-abortion zealots have been pushing in individual states in recent decades.  It’s right here in black and white from The Heritage Foundation, the group that brought us Project 2025.  “Congress may require states to treat persons equally by, for example, prohibiting abortion when it also prohibits homicide after birth,” Senior Legal Fellow Thomas Jipping wrote after the Trump-packed Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. There remains some performative opposition among anti-abortion extremists who were already pissed that their team wasn’t included in the platform committee.  “Trump and his campaign officials are willing to sacrifice the pro-life cause for the sake of their political expediency,” one anti-abortion leader told Politico. But those who are deeply enmeshed in the “personhood” movement know better. Students for Life Action’s Kristan Hawkins lauded the platform’s “support of 14th amendment protections for preborn children,” and called it “an open door to passing strong pro-life federal legislation.” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, also praised the platform and reiterated the idea that it lays a foundation for a national abortion ban.  “Under this amendment, it is Congress that enacts and enforces its provisions,” Dannenfelser wrote in a statement. “The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”    When it comes to abortion, look not to what Trump says but what his advisers on the Project 2025 team have endorsed. That includes banning abortion, along with contraception and in vitro fertilization.  Campaign Action