Pro-life groups prepared to fight attempts to weaken GOP platform on abortion

A group of pro-life leaders is warning pro-lifers to expect a battle to redefine the Republican Party platform at the upcoming GOP convention, but expect the right to life to stand unscathed afterward.

The Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, March for Life, Eagle Forum, and WallBuilders are among the groups allied to stop any effort to make the platform more open to abortion. Texas Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has also previously pledged to fight to keep the platform pro-life.

“There are liberal elements in the party who are financing an all-out attempt to radicalize the 2016 Republican Party platform,” FRC’s political arm, FRC Action, warns. “There is also talk of targeting the party’s plank on the sanctity of life.”

However, FRC president Tony Perkins and WallBuilders founder David Barton are both on the platform committee, which is responsible for shaping the GOP platform for the next four years, and both vow to, in Barton’s words, “work to ensure that we retain and strengthen our position on those principles” on moral and social issues.

The GOP platform currently states, “We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” It calls for both a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution, as well as legislation extending Fourteenth Amendment protection to the preborn.

Concerns over the platform first arose in April, when presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said rape and incest exceptions should be added to the GOP’s pro-life plank. Veteran conservative strategist Richard Viguerie has said Trump would have “zero chance” of succeeding if he tried to do so.