The final vote, according to a person present during the closed-door proceedings, was 84-18.
The document, with a long introduction in the voice of Trump, overruled the concerns of antiabortion activists who had announced before the meeting that they wanted the document to explicitly call for a constitutional amendment to give embryos or fetuses legal rights.
Instead the document said that the Constitution’s due process clause grants states the power “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,” the document says, according a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post. “We will oppose late term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”
The document was presented Monday to members of the Republican convention platform committee, a group handpicked by leaders of the Trump campaign. The 2016 platform, which Trump used in his 2020 reelection campaign, called for a constitutional amendment to affirm the constitutional due process rights of embryos and fetuses, and a national law that would ban abortion, with some exceptions, after about 20 weeks of gestation.
Trump has changed his position on the issue since the Supreme Court overturned the fundamental right to the procedure in earlier stages of pregnancy. He now argues that each state should come up with its own regulations.
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and a member of the platform committee, expressed disappointment about the outcome. “The 2024 platform is a decent statement of campaign priorities, but not necessarily the enduring principles of the party,” he said in a statement that objected to the lack of opportunity for amendments. “Unfortunately, the process was unbecoming of constitutional conservatives.”
Ralph Reed, the head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who had publicly warned Trump about changing the abortion language, thanked the former president in a statement for including language that said the due process clause of the constitution gives states the power to restrict abortion.
“That language has been in the GOP platform for 40 years and reflects the view of Ronald Reagan,” Reed said. “While aspirational, it applies to both the states and the federal government.”
Eight antiabortion and social conservative leaders, including Reed and Perkins, wrote a June 10 letter to Trump demanding that the platform include support for federal legislative limits on abortion and contain 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.”
The platform reflects a full Trump takeover of the party and reads almost like one of his rally speeches. It officially enshrines mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants as the platform of the Republican Party; proposes ending the Education Department; calls to “deport pro-Hamas radicals”; build a “great Iron Dome” over the country; “end the weaponization of the Department of Justice”; cancel the electric vehicle mandate and “FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE.”
“We will implement measures to secure our elections, including voter ID, highly sophisticated paper ballots, proof of citizenship, and same day voting,” the platform reads.
The platform also shows how far the party has moved on trade issues under Trump. The party now supports tariffs, according to the platform. Language from the 2016 Republican platform supporting Puerto Rico’s ability to seek statehood was also dropped from the new document.
The 2016 document was far more extensive, with 54 pages of tightly packed text. Trump advisers have signaled that they wanted the new document to directly reflect the views of Trump, a break from past tradition where Republican activists are empowered to shape the document in consultation with the presumptive nominee’s campaign, often resulting in language that was different in emphasis and detail from the candidate’s own public statements.
Vincent Haley, a former deputy assistant to the president during Trump’s first term, largely wrote the document presented Monday, according to people familiar with the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private activities. Trump later reviewed and edited the document, the people said. He wrote the headers on the sections, changed language and expanded the list of bullet points in the introduction from 10 to 20, one of the people said.
The former president called in Monday to a meeting of the platform committee, a person familiar with the meeting said.
“For decades, our politicians sold our jobs and livelihoods to the highest bidders overseas with unfair trade deals and a blind faith in the siren song of globalism. They insulated themselves from criticism and the consequences of their own bad actions, allowing our borders to be overrun, our cities to be overtaken by crime, our system of justice to be weaponized, and our young people to develop a sense of hopelessness and despair. They rejected our history and our values. Quite simply, they did everything in their power to destroy our country,” the Republican Party’s official platform now reads.
The new platform draft also removes language from 2016 condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to grant same-sex couples the right to marry. The new language does not weigh in on same-sex marriage.
“Republicans will promote a culture that values the sanctity of marriage, the blessings of childhood, and the foundational role of families, and supports working parents,” it says instead. “We will end policies that punish families.”
The 2016 platform endorsed the idea that parents could seek “conversion therapy” for children because of their sexuality. “We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children,” it read.
The new platform drops that language. It stops short of seeking to bar parents from seeking medical treatment for minor children, while condemning any taxpayer funding of such procedures. “We will keep men out of women’s sports, ban taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX education regulations, and restore protections for women and girls,” the platform says.
The language around abortion in the new platform does acknowledge the 14th Amendment, while making no mention of further changes to the Constitution. “We proudly stand for families and life. 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.
