Republican Party Backs Away from Pro-Life Stance in New Platform
Evangelicals oppose Donald Trump’s shift to leave abortion policy up to the states.
The new Republican National Convention platform endorsed by Donald Trump is missing the strong pro-life stance evangelicals have come to expect from the GOP.
Instead of calling for a concerted national push to curtail abortion, as the official party platform has done for the past 40 years, the new document removes that language and deems the matter best left to individual states to decide.
Even evangelical leaders who had been split over Trump have joined together in a chorus of criticism and disappointment.
“A moment when the abortion industry has been knocked on its heels is no time to shrink from a full-throated commitment to protecting preborn lives,” Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told Politico.
He wrote for Religion News Service that Republicans’ actions suggest they see abortion as “too politically fraught and prefer to run from a defense of the sanctity of life altogether.”
Clint Pressley, a North Carolina megachurch pastor who has recently been elected SBC president, wrote on social media that he is “disheartened” by national Republicans.
“The GOP platform may be subject to change, but God’s word is not,” he said. “Southern Baptists ‘contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death’ and will insist that elected officials do the same.”
The change in the proposed Republican platform reflects a shift toward Trump’s stance on the issue. He’s carved out a middle-of-the-road approach while on the campaign trail, saying the issue should be left to the discretion of the states. During the recent ...