Some Thoughts on Abortion and Trump's Platform
100 years from now our great great grandchildren will think of abortion as archaic and monstrous, as we think of slavery.
by Rod D. Martin
July 16, 2024
Some thoughts on abortion and the platform:
I think "abortion as a state issue" is what we said when we were fighting for decades to overturn Roe. I think that was necessary. But it was certainly not a final answer. I think turning the issue back to the states is certainly a better halfway house than what we had.
But in reality, the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment abolishes abortion. At the federal level. Everywhere. "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
What due process does the infant get?
The new GOP Platform makes that point, albeit subtly. Don't think Donald Trump doesn't understand exactly what he did.
I am opposed to the platform changes, though I understand the aim: Trump is trying to ease a lot of independents and Democrats into our coalition, and since abortion is at this moment, politically speaking, a state issue, why promise something you can't deliver anyway? The platform encourages states to ban abortion "based on the 14th amendment". That is NOT "pro-abortion".
But add enough additional judges, and just as Trump overturned Roe, eventually you're going to abolish abortion. Because the 14th Amendment already demands it.
There's just going to have to be a lot of persuasion -- and a lot of new judges -- between here and there. Most pro-lifers were frankly pretty lazy during the Roe era, because the Supreme Court had taken things out of their hands, and they didn't have to do the hard work of persuading. And just as bad, the people they might have otherwise persuaded didn't need to listen, because they couldn't really do anything about it either.
Roe didn't just stifle democracy. It stifled thought. And it atrophied activism.
Dobbs has changed all that. The mere fact that our stunted pro-life movement didn't have a plan for what came next doesn't mean we don't need one, can't make one, and can't win.
So rather than waiting for Donald Trump to hand us another deus ex machina, let's get to work.
We should end baby killing like we ended slavery. 100 years from now our great great grandchildren will think of abortion as archaic and monstrous, as we think of slavery.
=====
Some additional thoughts I posted to X later:
If you want to make the Republicans pay an electoral price for changing the Platform, good.
But could you please consider more useful options than electing Joe Biden and his promise to legislate Roe as federal law?
How about targeting key RNC members?
Primarying bad House and Senate members?
Applying pressure where, in 2028, no future Presidential candidate can get away with this?
Knee-jerk reactions aren’t going to beat strategy.
Which is one of the main reasons Evangelicals lose, and lost on this.
Suicide is a stupid option.
Making this impossible in the future is smart. Do the hard work and be smart.
Over on Facebook, my friend Aman Verjee asks what I would do now: keep working for a constitutional amendment or fight state by state. My response:
I personally would restore the platform planks we had in 2016 and 2020.
Practically, I would pass as much good legislation on the state level as possible, in as many states as we can. Our six week ban here in Florida is a good start, and defeating the Democrats' effort to amend our state constitution to create an absolute abortion right is essential.
But I think two things are essential:
1. Personhood amendments, explicitly defining the unborn child as a person in as many state constitutions as possible, which would instantly ban abortion in those states. Doing this forces a Supreme Court battle and potentially extends that logic nationwide. (No, I don't think that last bit will happen soon, but we can start laying the groundwork now.)
2. We MUST start passing state laws banning the abortion pill, on grounds that could justify a federal lawsuit. Overturning Chevron helps with that, though the Supremacy Clause is still out there. Nevertheless, I think it would be hard for this Supreme Court to put abortion rights -- which they agree are not in the Constitution -- or the FDA's regulatory power -- which they just nuked in Loper Bright -- ahead of a state constitutional extension of fundamental rights.
Finally, I think that we will lose on some of these initiatives. We should do what the Democrats would do and come right back to them the morning after. It's what the old abolitionists would have done.
I'll always marvel that, of all people, it was Trump who made the end of Roe happen. Had you told just about anyone that a decade ago, in 2014, that he would be the next president and appoint 3 Supreme Court justices, and thereby consign Roe v. Wade to the dustbin of history, they would have told you that you belonged in a psychiatric ward. If ever there was an example in U.S. politics that God can and does work in strange, mysterious ways, it's that. And the spiritual significance of that can't be overstated.
I concur with your assessment about the unborn and 14th amendment and the pressing need to persuade people on the issue. What is likely to be much harder than that though is convincing Americans to abandon one of the main drivers of abortion: a highly dysfunctional sexual ethic. I could be wrong, but from where I sit there are presently far too many "sexual atheists" even in the church, alas, to make a truly consistent pro-life view inwardly compelling. Barring another great awakening, the free love ethos of the sexual revolution continues to be baked into so much of culture that it'll be like trying to make the case with one foot on the brake with the other on the gas pedal. Nothing is impossible with God, of course.