Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the conservative playbook for a new Trump administration penned by dozens of right-wing organizations — and especially its hard-line anti-abortion proposals.
In the lead-up to the Republican convention, many credulously lauded Trump for “softening” or “moderating” the GOP platform on the issue, despite the fact that the platform proposes fetuses and embryos already have full constitutional rights.
Trump said that Project 2025 went “way too far” on abortion in a Fox News interview filmed over the weekend in Mar-a-Lago, prior to the attempt on his life. But just hours after the interview aired on Monday morning, Trump announced his pick for running mate: Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a man with a recent history of strong opposition to abortion whose selection was celebrated by anti-abortion groups like Students for Life Action.
In the past 48 hours, Vance has tried to backpedal on his abortion stances, including by scrubbing an “END ABORTION” section on his Senate campaign website, which now redirects to a fundraising page for the Trump-Vance ticket. Until he got the nod, this site succinctly distilled Vance’s “100 percent pro-life” views:
Eliminating abortion is first and foremost about protecting the unborn, but it’s also about making our society more pro-child and pro-family. The historic Dobbs decision puts this new era of society into motion, one that prioritizes family and the sanctity of all life.
Vance’s views on abortion thus track with one of Project 2025’s most basic proposals: that “the Dobbs decision is just the beginning.” Between Trump’s platform, Vance’s track record, and Vance’s ties to those leading Project 2025, the Trump campaign’s attempts to distinguish their own platform from the Project 2025 anti-abortion agenda are growing increasingly implausible.
Fetuses and the 14th Amendment
In past presidential election cycles, the GOP platform devoted multiple pages to various anti-abortion proposals, including appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade and enacting a national ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which Trump advocated when the House passed such a ban in 2017.
The concept of fetal personhood — that fetuses and embryos should have the same constitutional rights as people — has long been at the heart of the GOP’s anti-abortion plank. But past platforms envisioned passing a “human life amendment” to the Constitution and related legislation.
When the Republican National Committee unveiled the draft platform last week, it had just four sentences on abortion. Since the national 20-week ban was dropped, many commentators interpreted the platform as softening the party’s stance on abortion.
Abortion opponents, however, celebrated one sentence, in particular, which was approved by a voice vote of GOP delegates on Monday: “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.”
Far from moderating on abortion, the GOP platform now suggests that fetuses and embryos already have full constitutional rights — without the need for any new laws or amendments. This aligns neatly with Project 2025’s roadmap and Vance’s views.
Notably, the platform refers to the constitutional rights of the “person” under the 14th Amendment, rather than the rights of the “unborn,” as prior platforms phrased it.
“To people in the know, the reference to every person being entitled to due process will bring to mind the idea of fetal personhood and suggest that the GOP will pursue it,” Mary Ziegler, a legal historian, wrote on X after the draft platform came out.
Plenty of anti-abortion organizations certainly read it that way and thus endorsed the revised language.
“It is important that the GOP reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, in a statement.
“The most significant contribution that the GOP platform makes for LIFE comes in celebrating the fact that the 14th Amendment ‘guarantees’ legal protection for the preborn,” said Students for Life Action’s Kristan Hawkins in a similarly triumphant statement.
“It is proper and good to recognize every life, including those in the womb, share the distinct protections gained by those that have given so much and found as a guarantee within the 14th Amendment of the Constitution,” Americans United for Life wrote in its analysis of the draft platform.
As Erika Bachiochi, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center think tank argued in the wake of the Dobbs decision, getting courts to recognize fetuses as full “persons” under the law and Constitution is “the movement’s ultimate — if elusive — goal.”
“The Republican party has now decided that the Constitution already protects fetal personhood,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a University of Texas law professor who studies reproductive rights and religion.
8, Vance said, “We’re going to fight like hell to make sure that those things stay the law of the land.”
Vance has praised law 8, which prohibits abortions as early as six weeks, when the embryo is the size of a pea, as “a law that protects the rights of the unborn.” He aligns with Project 2025 and the GOP platform in believing that fetuses and embryos already have rights that must be safeguarded.
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