(NewsNation) — For the last four decades, the Republican party has officially backed a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion nationwide. Now, hardline abortion foes fear the party will soften that stand to conform to likely nominee former President Donald Trump’s new position.
The latest evidence: The Trump campaign has banned at least two delegates from the GOP platform committee who had vowed to resist attempts to “water down” the party’s stands on abortion, marriage and Israel.
Politico, which first reported the story, says delegates in at least four other states have been told that the Trump campaign will try to block them from securing seats on the platform committee.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Trump has said he favors letting each state decide the issue. That’s a U-turn from the nationwide limits he once favored.
“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 on his social media platform Truth Social. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people,” he added.
Some evangelical conservatives fear that changing the official Republican party stand on abortion could cause many Trump supporters to stay home on election day.
“Right now, sitting here today, they are prepared to crawl across broken glass, to do everything in their power to see President Trump re-elected,” Faith & Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed told Politico. “I don’t want to see anything happen that would change that current dynamic,” he added.
Reed is leading a ten-group coalition he calls the “Platform Integrity Project” that favors no change in the GOP stand on abortion.
Platform committee members will meet in Milwaukee starting Sunday to finalize the GOP platform. Four years ago, the party made no changes to its 60-page 2106 platform.
Last week, Trump advisors sent a memo to platform committee members calling for a pared-down platform “to ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise and easily digestible,” according to the note obtained by The New York Times.
“If we do not provide voters with clarity on the binary choice between President Trump’s and Republicans’ leadership versus that of Joe Biden and the Democrats, no one will do it for us,” the advisers wrote.
Trump loyalists have also banned reporters from the platform committee meetings, breaking a decades-long tradition. C-SPAN had televisied the panel’s work since 1984.