19 Republican National Committee Platform Delegates Urge RNC Leadership to Stand for Unborn Life

MILWAUKEE, July 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Family Research Council Action Chairman Tony Perkins, who is a member of the RNC Platform Committee from Louisiana joined 18 of his fellow platform delegates in signing and submitting a platform minority report to the Republican National Committee.  

The platform minority report is the only record to emerge from the unprecedented, closed-door meeting of the 2024 Platform Committee.  The platform minority report records those who stepped out of the cloak of secrecy to be on record as supporting the unborn. 

The report notes that language on the protection of unborn human life, which has been included in each GOP platform for nearly 50 years, was removed from the 2024 RNC platform.  FRC Action is encouraging grassroots conservatives to express their support for keeping the Republican Party solidly pro-life by signing a petition to the RNC in support of the platform minority report.

Platform delegate signers include: Loran Baxter (Alaska), Alex Kolodin (Arizona), Susan Ellsworth (Arizona), Jim Dotson (Arkansas), Suzi Voyles (Georgia), Mark White (Hawaii), Mary Smart (Hawaii), Brad Sherman (Iowa), Tamara Scott (Iowa), Tim Huelskamp (Kansas), Kristina Smith (Kansas), Tony Perkins (Louisiana), Kevin Austin (North Carolina), Lori Hinz (North Dakota), Steve Nagel (North Dakota), Sandye Kading (South Dakota), David Barton (Texas), Gayle Ruzicka (Utah), and Robert "Bob" Ide (Wyoming).

Perkins commented on this supplemental report: 

"The 2024 Republican Platform is a fairly decent statement of a campaign's priorities, but not the enduring principles of a party. Notably, language on protecting unborn human life, which has been included in each GOP platform for nearly fifty years, was removed.  This is why I joined 18 of my fellow platform delegates in submitting a report to the RNC expressing our strong support for the right to life. We stand with the two-thirds of Republicans who say they want to keep or strengthen the GOP's pro-life plank.  The right to life is truly the right without which no other right has any meaning," concluded Perkins.

The minority report states in part:

"The undersigned, a minority of the committee, elected to the 2024 National Republican Platform Committee, not agreeing in totality with the majority, desire to express our views as follows:

"Not having an opportunity to entertain amendments to the 'draft' platform document, we submit the following expression for the continued protection of the unborn through support of a human life amendment.

"For Republicans, from the very inception of our party, the words of the Declaration [of Independence] took form in two overarching moral propositions, that is, the rejection and elimination of what our very first platform in 1856 called 'the twin relics of barbarism,' slavery and polygamy. We note with sober reflection how vast a cost the people of the United States paid for the achievement of that platform's commitments, and how long a period passed before those goals could be achieved. Today we observe the vitality of a more recent but analogous set of commitments, embodied most prominently in the promise of the Republican Party to preserve the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death. That commitment made its way into the platform of 1976, twelve decades after that original session in Philadelphia. That commitment to a human life amendment and a call for the Fourteenth Amendment's protection application to children before birth has been repeated in every platform since and, by this declaration of principle, we extend it now.

"In the coming years, we pledge ourselves to continue to work for the good of every child, every parent, and every family. We rededicate ourselves to the core policy positions endorsed through deliberation and transparency with ever-increasing clarity in previous platforms, with respect to the funding of abortion domestically and internationally, the expansion of alternatives to abortion, support for credits for adoption and all children, ending the exploitation of embryonic human beings, and above all recognizing the application of 14th amendment protections to our developing offspring. These are issues for the ages and not for any single cycle in our national life," notes the report.

To read the full report, please visit: https://www.frcaction.org/get.cfm?i=LK24G09&f=LK24G09

Attempts were made during the short proceedings to determine the formal requirements of a platform minority report. Chairperson of the committee, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, refused to provide an answer or guidance. Therefore, the above report was submitted to the Chairman of the RNC, Michael Whatley and the co-chair of the Platform Committee, Congressman Mike Waltz.

To sign the FRC Action petition, please visit: www.frcaction.org/report

SOURCE Family Research Council Action