The Republican Party Hasn’t Changed on Abortion

R esponding last week to the news that the United States Supreme Court seems poised to at last overturn Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden jumped feet first down one of his favorite wells. “What are the next things that are going to be attacked?” Biden asked. “Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that exists in American history,” Biden said, helpfully clarifying that he meant “recent American history.” He continued: “This is about a lot more than abortion.”

The thing is, though: It’s actually not “about a lot more than abortion.” It’s about abortion and nothing else, and it has been since the late 1970s. Rhetorically, it may make sense for the Democratic Party to pretend that the Republican Party of today is more “extreme” on abortion than the Republican Party of yesterday, just as it may make sense for clownish figures such as Eric Swalwell to pretend that the last half-century of focused pro-life activism was really about banning “interracial marriage” or ending “women’s right to vote.” But that doesn’t make any of those claims true.

On the contrary: To dig into the relevant history is to discover that the GOP has been consistent on this issue since the Ford administration.

In 1976, the Republican platform took “a position on abortion that values human life” and expressed support for “the efforts of those who seek enactment of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children.” In 1980, the party’s platform affirmed its “support of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children.” In 1984, the party’s platform reaffirmed its “support for a human life amendment to the Constitution,” endorsed “legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children,” and vowed to appoint “judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”

In 1988 and 1992, the GOP platform held that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” In 1996, the platform reiterated this language, and added that “our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions.” In 2000, the platform built yet further upon the language from 1996, tacking on a criticism of “the Supreme Court’s recent decision, prohibiting states from banning partial-birth abortions.” In 2004, the platform repeated the same commitments verbatim, and noted with pleasure that Congress had since “passed a ban on the inhumane procedure known as partial birth abortion.” In 2008, the platform chastised judges who were “ignoring the Constitution and its separation of powers, and imposing their personal opinions upon the public,” and issued a “lament that judges have denied the people their right to set abortion policies in the states.”

In 2012, the platform made sure to “assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed” and to record that Republicans supported “a human life amendment to the Constitution” and “legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” In 2016, the platform repeated this language almost exactly, swapping out “to unborn children” in favor of “children before birth.” In 2020, the party did not have a platform, but, to make clear where he stood, its candidate that year, Donald Trump, made sure that he became the first president to speak at the annual March for Life.

At no point since 1976 — the first election after Roe was wrongly decided — has the Republican Party shifted on this question. Gerald Ford personally favored a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe, and expressed “support” for the 1976 “Republican platform, which called for a constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortions.” While president, Ronald Reagan was so sure that abortion was an “urgent moral crisis” that he wrote an article for the Human Life Review in which he insisted that “every human life has intrinsic, sacred worth,” described abortion as killing, and noted not only that “abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution,” but that “no serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court’s result [in Roe], has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.”

Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, confirmed during his debate with Michael Dukakis that “I oppose abortion.” Bob Dole, the party’s candidate in 1996, was in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade and backed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion (with a few exceptions). In 2000, George W. Bush explained that he was “going to talk about the culture of life,” and that he hoped to “set the goal that every child born and unborn ought to be protected.” In 2008, John McCain backed overturning Roe, and, despite considering it unlikely “to take place,” also supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. The last two Republican presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, had both been pro-choice before running for president, but recognized that they had to change their minds on the issue if they were to lead the party. In 2007, while running for the nomination, Romney said that he was “proud to be pro-life,” that “we should overturn Roe v. Wade and return these issues to the states,” and that as president he would sign a federal bill outlawing abortion if one reached his desk. In 2016, during a debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump confirmed that he hoped to overturn Roe v. Wade “because I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges.”

So no, it is not the Republican Party that has changed. It’s Joe Biden. As a new lawmaker in the late 1970s, Biden took a step that even Jimmy Carter would not by publicly criticizing Roe. “I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion,” he told Washingtonian magazine. “I think it went too far.” Eight years later, while President Reagan was drafting his essay for the Human Life Review, Biden was one of only two Democrats to cast a committee vote in favor of a Republican-written constitutional amendment that would have overturned Roe v. Wade.

“What are the next things that are going to be attacked?” You tell us, Joe. You’re the expert.