The GOP Platform Is a Hoax—Don’t Fall for It | Opinion

If you believe the headlines, the Republican party’s 2024 platform “softens” its stance on abortion and same-sex marriage at the behest of former President Donald Trump. Trump supposedly moderated his position to win support from suburban women, independents, and the vast majority of Americans who oppose the extreme abortion bans enacted in many states over the past two years. Don’t be fooled by this transparent attempt to hoodwink voters.

First, the “scaled-back” platform is no less extreme than the party’s previous positions. True, it does not call specifically for a federal ban or say outright that laws permitting any termination of pregnancy are unconstitutional, as anti-abortion advocates wished. Instead, the platform declares that the Constitution “guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process,” and claims credit for giving “power to the States and to a vote of the People” to “pass Laws protecting those Rights.”

To be clear, this is a full-throated endorsement of states’ prerogative to ban abortion with no or limited exceptions, forcing pregnant patients to reach the brink of death before receiving care and to sacrifice their health and fertility to preserve even an embryo or fetus that cannot survive. And if the Constitution protects the unborn as “persons” with rights equal to those of living adults, then abortion cannot be allowed under any circumstances. At the very least, “a vote of the People” can authorize a national ban. Cleverly, the platform promises to “oppose Late Term Abortion,” which simultaneously evokes Trump’s ludicrous lie that Democrats support abortions up until the moment of birth and leaves the definition of “late term” open to include terminations after the first trimester or even earlier.

Moreover, the platform binds no one. Tempering its language is a cost-free way to distract and deceive voters. While anti-abortion advocates express disappointment in public, they can rest assured that Trump will deliver for them. Trump’s lack of personal convictions allows him to shape-shift according to what he thinks his audience wants to hear. But actions speak louder than words. Trump delivered spectacularly on his promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. And the GOP’s record renders laughable the platform’s promise to “support mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

In fact, Republican-led states actively discourage access to contraception and comprehensive sex education. The conservative legal movement fought for and won religious exemptions for corporations that deny contraceptive coverage to their employees. Many anti-abortion advocates oppose common forms of birth control such as the pill and IUDs, as well as IVF. The same red states that ban abortion reject free federal funds to expand Medicaid and subsidize childcare.

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions dovetail with the GOP’s strategy of misdirection. In June, the Court turned back a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and dismissed a dispute about states’ attempts to flout a federal law that requires emergency medical care, including abortion, for pregnant patients whose lives or health are at risk. Conveniently, these cases allowed the court to look “moderate” and “reasonable” while postponing unpopular rulings until after the election.

The GOP platform’s failure to condemn same-sex marriage is similarly misleading. As Justice Clarence Thomas freely admits, the same constitutional theory that overruled Roe makes precedents protecting marriage equality—as well as rights to contraception and same-sex intimacy—equally vulnerable. Last month, in a low-profile ruling about a citizen’s right to know why her non-citizen spouse could not obtain a visa, the supermajority quietly but ominously signaled its intent to revisit the scope of the right to marry.

To understand the Republican party’s real agenda, read Project 2025, the 900+ page blueprint for a second Trump administration authored by his acolytes for the Heritage Foundation. It lays out detailed plans to abolish the independent federal civil service and the Department of Education; vest broad new powers in the president; sharply curtail immigration and expand deportations; eviscerate civil rights and liberties; exempt religious individuals and corporations from obeying the law; supercharge corporate power; use the 1873 Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide; and decimate the government’s ability to fight climate change, gun violence, and discrimination or to protect the environment, consumers, workers, families, and the integrity of our elections.

If these plans sound like far-fetched fantasy, they shouldn’t. Recent decisions by the Court’s right-wing super-majority lay crucial groundwork: granting broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, allowing corrupt public officials and insurrectionists to escape scot-free, unleashing attacks on federal regulation, tearing down the wall between church and state, undermining voting rights, blessing gerrymandering, and rescinding basic individual freedoms. Trump’s attempts to distance himself from this terrifying agenda, like his GOP platform ruse, must not be allowed to succeed.

Serena Mayeri is the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.