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20-07-2024
WASHINGTON: Edna Wales, a Republican delegate from Florida, does not support abortion. As a Roman Catholic, the procedure goes against her moral values but her policy position, she told media at a street fair at the Republican National Convention, was that it should be left to the states. “I truly feel that,” she said.
Given that outlawing abortion nationwide has been an animating issue for religious Republicans for decades, it was a surprising position to hear at this weeklong gathering. Yet Wales’ stance is the same one that Donald Trump, the party’s nominee for president, now espouses.
The former president has boasted of appointing a US Supreme Court bench that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. The 2022 decision upended the landscape of abortion access in the US, with some Republican-led states swiftly outlawing or restricting the procedure while other Democratic-controlled states took steps to protect access.
After months of back and forth, Trump has made something of a public retreat from the issue, saying abortion should now be left to the states. While the party appears in lockstep with their nominee, a key theme of this week’s convention has been “unity” under the surface, some daylight has emerged between Trump’s Republican Party and the most ardent members of the anti-abortion movement who want to see the procedure ended nationally.
“I think where, potentially, President Trump currently is, and the pro-life movement is, it could be a schism,” said Marc Short, who was chief-of-staff to former vice-president Mike Pence one of the party’s staunchest anti-abortion politicians.
Trump’s position may well be a political calculation, given polls suggest the majority of Americans support abortion access. The end of Roe v Wade has also given Democrats a potent political issue to campaign on: protecting access. They performed better than expected during the 2022 midterm elections, and many pollsters and pundits credited the abortion issue for this.
Trump’s supporters at the convention in Milwaukee told media they appreciated the pragmatism at play. “I understand how he has to be so careful of how he handles (abortion) because of his run for president,” Wales said.
She said she believed pressure from the right on Trump was unfair, because “a lot of people are against abortion. You know, a lot of people are for abortion, and that is a very touchy subject”.
Internal tensions over the issue spilled into the open with the release of the 2024 Republican Party platform, which outlines its policies and positions on various key issues.
Its abortion section in 2016, and again in 2020, promised to appoint anti-abortion judges, to axe federal funding for Planned Parenthood and called for a “human life amendment” to be added to the Constitution.
This year, the abortion section underwent a heavy edit.
It cut the abortion section from 775 words to 90. The four-sentence pledge promises to stand for life and oppose “late-term abortion”.
It also states the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution “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 then adds: “Because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People.”
Republicans in Milwaukee expressed little issue with the new language and fell in line behind their nominee. “I agree it has to be up to the states,” said Maria Rodriguez of Georgia, who described herself as a “pro-life Christian” who switched to the Republican Party due to its opposition to abortion. (Int’l News Desk)
