Tempers flare as Trump reviews revised abortion plank for Republican platform

Donald Trump has begun to review draft language for the 2024 Republican platform that antiabortion leaders expect will abandon the party’s decades-long call to amend the U.S. Constitution to extend personhood protections to the unborn, according to multiple people involved with the discussions.

The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition. Others have started to discuss an effort to issue a “minority report” to the platform at the convention, according to the people involved, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Trump advisers, in turn, have been angered by the public pressure from antiabortion activists, according to people familiar with the campaign’s internal discussions. At the same time, Trump allies are not overly worried about the platform skirmish, because evangelicals strongly opposed to abortion have remained among his most fervent supporters regardless of his evolving positions on the issue.

“If the Trump campaign decides to remove national protections for the unborn in the GOP platform, it would be a miscalculation that would hurt party unity and destroy pro-life enthusiasm between now and the election,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are now just one business day away from the platform committee meeting and no assurances have been made. Instead, every indication is that the campaign will muscle through changes behind closed doors.”

Trump advisers - who selected the platform committee’s delegates - have made clear in private discussions that they want a shorter platform document, with abortion language consistent with Trump’s current position, multiple people said.

Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, Trump waffled on whether he would support a federal abortion ban. But Trump now says he wants each state to make its own decision on abortion regulation, while resisting calls for new federal limits that he once supported.

“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have [sic] more conservative than others,” he said in April. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”

Trump allies have argued that letting states decide their own abortion limitations helps the former president seem more moderate on the issue. Democrats contend that, instead, it weds Trump to the most extreme abortion limits in the country, including some states that have enacted near-total bans on the procedure.

In the face of the activist backlash, Trump’s advisers have barred the press and C-SPAN cameras from next week’s scheduled meetings of the platform committee, a break in tradition that has alarmed some delegates. Members of the Republican National Committee not directly participating in the platform debate will be able to attend the meetings, which start Sunday afternoon at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, with a meeting to offer amendments scheduled for Tuesday.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a platform committee member, wrote a letter Monday to RNC Chairman Michael Whatley dismissing the private discussions as “stalling tactics” by Trump advisers. He called the decision to restrict the press from the platform committee discussions “un-American,” and warned that the platform could be watered down to “a few pages of meaningless, poll-tested talking points.”

“We reach consensus by presenting our ideas and playing by the rules. And I am very concerned about closing down the process,” Perkins said Thursday. “The Republican Party should not be operating as we point out the left so often does - wanting to silence opposition.”

The Trump campaign said the final abortion language has not been determined. Some campaign officials have suggested that the eventual language will appease many antiabortion activists.

“The Platform Committee has yet to convene to discuss what language should be in the final document,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.

Trump signed a letter to antiabortion leaders during his 2016 campaign promising to support the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” federal legislation that would have outlawed abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of gestation with some exceptions. He supported that legislation in his first term, but his policy changed after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Antiabortion activists reject the idea that the high court’s reversal changes the need for federal legislation or a constitutional amendment process, as they have expanded their efforts to challenge federal regulatory approval of abortion medication.

They argue that a constitutional amendment on abortion - a feature of the GOP platform since the 1980s - can be seen as a state issue, since any amendment would ultimately need to be ratified by at least 38 of the 50 states. They also say that Trump’s recent statements on abortion fail to address the abortions performed in more liberal states that allow the procedure with relatively few limitations.

Eight antiabortion and social conservative leaders wrote a June 10 letter to Trump demanding that the platform include support for federal legislative limits on abortion, and it contained the following sentence: “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

“This is the language that both you and Ronald Reagan ran on and won,” the leaders wrote. Among the signatories were Dannenfelser, Perkins, Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed and Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America.

One antiabortion activist involved in the discussion with Trump’s team said there has been little recent communication with antiabortion leaders beyond broad assurances that the platform “will be fine, and it will be pro-life.”

“Our posture was, ‘Let’s fix this behind the scenes,’” this activist said. “Once it became more apparent to us that they didn’t want to work with us and seemed inclined to want to pick a fight with us, we have been more vocal.”

Some RNC members are also concerned that the Trump team will back away from the 2016 platform’s declaration that denounced the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. The previous platform called marriage between one man and one woman “the foundation for a free society” that “has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.”

Trump advisers say privately that they do not want a fight over same-sex marriage and consider it a settled issue not worth re-litigating, according to people familiar with the conversations.

“It would not be a smart move to define it any other way,” one RNC member said of marriage. “I’m a little bit concerned about what might transpire.”

Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.