The Republican National Committee’s 2024 stance on abortion is the worst platform plank he’s ever seen, pro-life advocate Tom McClusky said Wednesday at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington.
McClusky, principal at public affairs firm Greenlight Strategies LLC, said that this week was a dark one for the pro-life movement in a panel discussion, “Beyond Dobbs.” That’s a reference to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the June 2022 Supreme Court abortion decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
The RNC’s 2024 platform betrays the pro-life founders of the Republican Party, he said.
“If the Republican Party weakens, I’m standing on the shoulders of people who fought for decades to make the Republican Party pro-life,” McClusky said.
The RNC’s Platform Committee adopted former President Donald Trump’s GOP platform, the Trump campaign announced on Monday, including new language on abortion and on protection of the unborn.
That new platform’s abortion language is a significant departure from the party’s life messaging in 2016, which was largely replicated in 2020, since it no longer calls for federal protections for unborn babies and instead suggests that the issue is up to the states. The 2016 platform included the word “abortion” 35 times, while the 2024 platform merely includes abortion once.
“It appears that there is little courage or appetite among our national leaders to try to protect unborn Americans with new federal laws,” said Katy Talento, a former policy adviser for President Donald Trump and CEO at AllBetter Health, a firm that helps employers navigate health plan benefits.
Abortion is not just a state issue, as the RNC platform suggests, McClusky said, because the federal government is not neutral on it. More than $1 billion a year goes to the abortion industry nationally and internationally to help promote, subsidize, and perform abortions, he said.
The Biden administration “is not just pro-abortion,” McClusky said. “It lives and breathes abortion. It is their religion. They want to take out us. They want to take out our children. So, there is a federal role right there.”
“States can fight against the abortion drug, but the abortion drug is promoted by the United States Postal Service—that is under federal jurisdiction,” he added. “That is why the federal government needs to get involved.”
Politicians should read the Food and Drug Administration label on the abortion pill before advocating for it being available on demand, Talento said.
“The next woman bleeding out in a fetal position could be their daughter or granddaughter,” she said.
“It’s time to take seriously the dangerous risks of this powerful, toxic chemical,” Talento added, asserting that 1 in 20 women end up in a hospital emergency room after taking the abortion pill.
The Biden administration has transformed “every agency into Planned Parenthood,” she said, adding that a second Trump administration could reverse President Joe Biden’s radically pro-abortion agency guidelines, she said.
“Those will all have to be reversed,” Talento said, “and there’s simply no avoiding it.”
Correction: This article has been edited to remove a reference to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., supporting mifepristone. Rubio opposes the abortion pill.
