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It is highly important to the United States that some national political leader, somewhere, affirm the principle that since all human beings are created equal and endowed by their Creator with a right to life, then protection of the law must extend to unborn human beings as well.
For this affirmation, I just now used the language of our Declaration of Independence. In the Catholic tradition one might say the precept "do not kill" is of the natural law. It is binding on all of us, no matter what human authorities may say. I might have said that the foundation of a society is fractured if the natural law is deliberately contradicted.
Legal abortion is like legal slavery, and, as Lincoln said, echoing Our Lord, a house divided against itself cannot stand. We are, sadly, a very divided house. Thus, it is all the more important that some responsible national leader, somewhere, assert the true basis of our union.
That leader until this week, for better or for worse, was the Republican Party. I am not an avid reader of official political platforms. The Republican Party has not been an exemplary executor of its own platform, or perhaps of anything else. And yet in its 2016 platform one finds this language:
"The Constitution's guarantee that no one can 'be deprived of life, liberty, or property' deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence's proclamation that 'all' are 'endowed by their Creator' with the inalienable right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to children before birth."
Similar language has been in the platform since 1976. From an American and patriotic point of view, the language is impeccable. It asserts the dependence of the Constitution on the Declaration. It appeals to the crucial post-Civil War amendment. We are a nation "dedicated to a proposition," as Lincoln said at Gettysburg. The 2016 platform asserts that proposition.
Let's be clear that there is no other basis for unity available to us in the United States. Our union depends upon our common recognition and affirmation of those rights that are truly natural rights -- or as Catholics might prefer to say, of the natural law.
But in the 2024 platform, adopted earlier this week, that language is jettisoned:
"We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments)."
There is no appeal to the Declaration of Independence. There is no statement of general opposition to abortion, only "Late Term Abortion," which is left undefined. Whether "Birth Control" includes abortifacients is unclear. Since IVF involves early abortion, the platform in supporting IVF now positively supports some abortions.
Its treatment of the 14th Amendment at first looks incoherent. The problem is in the word, "therefore." If it was asserting (as did the earlier platforms) that the 14th Amendment properly interpreted (that is, interpreted in light of the Declaration) prohibited abortion, then it should have said, "therefore, states have an obligation to make abortion illegal." Instead, it says "therefore, states are free to pass Laws." But note it does not say "free to pass laws protecting the right to life." It says, "free to pass laws protecting those rights." "Those rights" are a right to life and a right to liberty.
The most plausible way of interpreting this language is that the platform is now saying that, besides the right to life, there is a right to abortion, which is a liberty right, which falls under the 14th Amendment, and that states are free to acknowledge or protect that right also as they wish.
That is to say that the language of the platform now assets a philosophy not dissimilar from Roe v. Wade. In fact, if there is a liberty right to abortion under the 14th Amendment, it would follow that states are not free to prohibit abortion completely. They would need to give some recognition to this right.
That is to say that the RNC platform now abandons the Declaration of Independence -- which is the genuine, shared, foundational basis for unity in our country. Perforce it must replace this basis of unity with some other. But what is that? The charisma of a populist?
There are many other serious shortcomings in the GOP platform. It used to assert that the Social Security program needs to be fixed, because it will go bankrupt (on the most sanguine projections) by 2035. Now it says Social Security will not be touched. It says nothing now about our enormous national debt. It no longer defends the natural institution of marriage.
But it is hard for this observer not to conclude that in rejecting its historic adherence to the principles of Lincoln, the party has effectively dissolved itself. It has pushed itself off its own platform.
- Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book is "Mary's Voice in the Gospel of John." You may follow him on X (twitter) @michael_pakaluk.