In light of the recent changes to the 2024 Republican national platform, The Stream’s John Zmirak interviewed the leader of America’s most dogged grassroots pro-life movement: Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. We wanted to find out what this political shift behind the scenes means for the most important moral issue facing Americans today. 

The Stream: The GOP platform has been changed, removing pro-life and pro-family language. Consider the following:

This was moral abdication, no other way to describe it. It’s a sad day for Republicans. #RNC #GOPPlatform #Abortion pic.twitter.com/lYVqrV922D

— Colton Bennett (@BennettIdaho) July 9, 2024

Conservative Christians on platform committee are being told by Republican leadership to basically get with the program and support the eradication of culture war issues from party platform. “Where else are your people going to go?” a GOP leader told an evangelical leader.

— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) July 8, 2024

How much ground does the new language give away? What key issues does it fudge or ignore?

Kristan Hawkins: The platform story is a glass half-empty, glass half-full situation. For some reason, the Trump team wanted to quickly move forward on a shortened approach to a broad GOP agenda. But since late last year, Students for Life Action has been working behind the scenes and through our GOP for LIFE Project to communicate a vision which encompassed two important points in particular. These issues deserved more attention, but at the end of the day, we see two signs for hope. We worked:

1) To affirm that the Fourteenth Amendment protects all life, something that must be relied on post-Roe. That was our Day One messaging after Roe v. Wade fell. It was the theme of two National Celebrate Life Day rallies at the Lincoln Memorial, and it represents a legal path forward. The fact that the Fourteenth Amendment made the copy cut is a win. This is a legal foundation for where we go from here.

2) To oppose the GOP embracing a late-term abortion limit as a national aspiration, as compared to a strategy in certain jurisdictions. And to note, the platform specifically condemns late-term abortion, which is on the ballot in all states where the abortion lobby is running get-out-the-vote efforts with ballot initiatives. Condemning those ballot initiatives – as a national party from the top down – should now be on the table. With more than nine 9 in 10 abortions taking place by three months (12 weeks) of pregnancy, if the GOP embraced a limit at 12 or 15 or 20 weeks, it would have been a policy that didn’t move us forward in a post-Roe America. If the GOP is for more than nine in 10 abortions and the Democratic Party for all 10 of 10, where is a pro-life voter to go? The platform condemned late-term abortion and did not embrace, as the GOP standard, a late-term limit.

Here’s where the platform falls short:

• It does not actively address the reality that abortion is a local, state, and federal issue. The platform celebrates the reality that with Roe gone, states can now engage in policy. But given all the tax money, federal agency policy, and prejudice in favor of abortion littered through domestic and international programs, abortion is federal.

• It sloppily includes a shout-out to contraception and IVF without noting some obvious issues. No one is trying to “ban” contraception. But an abortion lobby that gets money from the distribution of contraception, much of it potentially abortifacient, wants to force funding and mandates for more contraception without regard for whether that makes minors vulnerable to predators or violates our conscience rights. Nuns in the past had to go to court to prevent coerced support for contraception. And the statement on IVF ignores the chaos and controversy of an industry that has sloppily contributed to its public relations nightmare. As a business, it creates disposable people as standard operating procedure, commodifying women as surrogates and children as property. What does such “support” mean? That negligent, predatory business can prey on vulnerable women and families.
• It also strips away some of the beautiful language that people loved, all for a rather nebulous goal, that no one requested, of getting a shorter platform.

TS: Two potential vice presidential choices with previous pro-life records, Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, both Catholics, are speaking out in favor of backtracking — Rubio on the platform, Vance on chemical abortions. What’s driving such people?

KH: It’s not possible to address why people are speaking out, or why so many are not. But each generation has to stand strong and defend the weak and vulnerable. It’s up to us, the pro-life movement, to make a case for the value of all human beings and to teach this generation of politicians about what is possible — and what we want to see happen.

But in particular, on Sen. Vance’s misstatements on chemical abortion pills, a lot of political leaders are getting that wrong. The Supreme Court did not say that chemical abortion pills are safe and should be distributed as they are. They didn’t address the key issues at all. In fact, they said that the wrong victims had been identified and to go back and try [the case] again. And so we will be back. You can read more of our fact check of Vance’s remarks here: Pro-Life Sen. Vance Is Unfortunately Wrong About Chemical Abortion Pills

 

TS: How serious is it that the new language aggressively supports IVF? Is this an issue we just can’t fight on at the moment, since people lazily assume IVF is “pro-life” because some of the babies it produces will be born without being frozen first?

KH: IVF is a sleeper issue right now, as many Americans simply don’t understand it. It sounds compassionate to care about people who want a family, and I do understand and empathize with all those who yearn for a child. But the IVF industry preys on that desire, turning women’s bodies and children into products for sale and creating disposable children by force-maturing and force-fertilizing a woman’s eggs to sell the possibility of a family while throwing away lives. We have urged legislators and political leaders to slow down and learn more before offering this predatory and sloppy industry blanket support.

Read more on our analysis here: What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Talk About Invitro Fertilization (IVF)

Or here: Unregulated IVF Treats Children Like Widgets – California Fertility Clinic Reportedly Implants Dead Babies into Their Patients

TS: Are pro-lifers trapped with zero leverage since the Left is so crazy and destructive — opening the borders, imprisoning pro-lifers and Trump allies — that we all have a figurative gun held to our heads now? How can we claw back leverage with the Trump team on the pro-life issue?

KH: We are asking the Trump administration to address the weaponization of government against Americans – and pro-life Americans in particular. That begins with the right appointments.

We are looking to reduce the federal government’s role in pushing abortion, beginning with debarring and defunding Planned Parenthood — and all abortion vendors. That is something even conservatives who wrongly believe abortion is merely a “state issue” should get behind.

We hope for policies that protect and support vulnerable families, like an expended Child Tax Care Credit.

And we ask for use of the bully pulpit and support from a president and his team committed to protecting life in law and in service.

To do that, we have to show up – all the time – to communicate what we want and to fight for those who can’t speak for themselves.

TS: On the chemical abortion issue, the recent SCOTUS decision apparently handed total discretion to the FDA, a federal agency. With 2/3 of abortions now chemical, and that happening even in pro-life states, how crucial is it that the president be involved?

KH: When the Supreme Court looks at the chemical abortion pill case again, the presumption of brilliance and omniscience by the FDA will be gone, thanks to the recent Loper decision. The Supreme Court did not say that the FDA handled the issue of chemical abortion pill approval and distribution properly; they said we needed to come back with different victims. And so we will be back.

There is no more federal issue than chemical abortion pill approval and distribution. Three Democratic presidents – Clinton, Obama, and now Biden – brought the pills on the market and allow their distribution in ways known to hurt women, the preborn — and, we would argue, the environment, as chemically tainted blood, placenta tissue, and human remains are flushed into our waterways with the de facto permission of Biden’s FDA.

This is an issue in which states’ rights will not work. This is allowed with federal permission, and a Trump administration – through appointments to Health and Human Services, the FDA, the EPA, and even the Department of Justice – must address the impact of what the Democrats created.

Even if you support abortion – and we don’t – that doesn’t excuse exposing women to injury, infertility, and death, empowering abusers, and ignoring abortion-related water pollution. But Biden’s FDA turns a blind eye to it all.

We need President Trump to make the right appointments to all agencies to roll back weaponized programs that are prejudiced against pro-life Americans and in favor of abortion.

TS: How do we counter the dishonest language that refers to abortion pills as “emergency contraception”?

KH: Consistently, the con in contraception is pretending that chemicals which prevent conception are the same as those that end life. People don’t understand how things function – how some drugs and devices end life while others block a pregnancy before it begins. It’s up to all of us to learn about the things we put in our bodies. But know this: the abortion lobby will call anything by a false name to keep the money coming in. Check your sources.

Explaining the lies and misinformation of the abortion lobby is a full-time job. Follow our social media for apologetics to learn more on a daily basis!

You can also learn more on our website, here.

TS: How has SFLA moved the needle on these issues? What would you ask pro-life Americans to do next?

In the last 15 years, there hasn’t been a battle in the pro-life movement that Students for Life, and the generation we have the privilege to serve and lead, hasn’t been part of. Need public relations support at the Supreme Court before a critical hearing or decision day? We are there. Need a group of people to get to a state capital to lobby legislators or testify? We are there. Have a pro-abortion fundraiser happening in your community or starting up a new community pro-life effort? We are the first to be called for manpower.

Right now, America is entering a new phase in the abortion war — a divided States of America, where the people in half our states will be free to be born and the other half free to be killed. As President Lincoln predicted, eventually, we will become all one thing or another. To ensure we are victorious, we must keep recruiting, training, and mobilizing — growing our army larger than the pro-abortion forces.

Right now, we have a chance to let a future Trump administration and the Democratic Party leadership know that the human rights issue of the day is not a throwaway line in a debate. It’s a moral issue of profound significance that demands we protect the least of these.

Get involved this year. Talk to your candidates. Engage with Students for Life of America & Students for Life Action. And don’t be silent when lives are on the line.

In 1967, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan was eloquent about the need for each generation to fight for what is right and not to be ambivalent. He said:

Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.

We need to fight for the lives – the freedom – of all Americans, born and preborn. This is our time and our challenge.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 10 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.