Oh, Well If It's Not In The GOP Platform ...
OF COURSE REPUBLICANS STILL WANT TO BAN ABORTION AND SAME SEX MARRIAGE.
On Monday, the Republican party released its official 2024 platform — a platform meant to reflect not the views of the party as a whole, but of the ideas and stances that Donald Trump believes could put him back in the White House.
One of these positions, which the Washington Post and other outlets credulously reported as though it were an actual change in position and not an obvious ploy, was a supposed “softening” of the GOP’s stance on abortion. For the first time in forty years, the platform doesn’t explicitly call for a national ban.
“After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the states and to a vote of the people,” the document reportedly says. “We will oppose late term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”
It’s very obvious what Trump is doing. He sees Republicans losing elections all over the place because people don’t want them to ban abortion, and he doesn’t want to lose his election because people don’t want him to ban abortion.
He also knows that a lot of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are unhappy about Biden as the nominee and the strongest argument people are using to push them to vote for him anyway is that, if Trump is elected, Republicans will find a way to ban abortion across the nation. Which they will.
What Trump wants out of this is for people to go “Ok, well if he’s not going to ban abortion, I’ll just stay home.” That’s the goal.
However, Republicans have already told us, in great detail, about their plans to make abortion inaccessible even in areas where it is legal — and there’s not much of a difference between making abortion entirely inaccessible and an outright ban.
What they plan to do, as outlined in the Project 2025 plan that Republicans are all now pretending they know nothing about, is to use Comstock laws to make it illegal to send anything related to abortion through the mail. This will not only bar pharmacies from mailing abortion pills, it will bar pharmaceutical companies from sending abortion pills to pharmacies in the first place. It will bar medical supply companies from mailing abortion-related equipment.
They don’t have to make a law, they don’t have to push anything through Congress (which they almost definitely could not, anyway), Trump very likely wouldn’t even have to sign anything, and they can make abortion just as inaccessible as if they did. That is the whole entire point of their plan to replace all civil servants with people loyal to Trump and to the Republican Party.
Additionally, just because they switched the language in the bill to call to leave abortion laws to the states doesn’t mean that the rest of the platform is not absolutely batshit, which it is.
Via The Guardian:
The 20-point all-caps plan lays out an agenda to “seal the border and stop the migrant invasion” as well as continue building a border wall that Trump promised during his presidency but largely failed to deliver. The plan also called to “end inflation and make America great again”; enact tax cuts for workers with “no tax on tips” and make college campuses “safe” by deporting so-called “pro-Hamas radicals”.
The platform repeatedly criticizes policies to empower transgender individuals and specifically their involvement in sports, promises to repeal emissions regulations on gas vehicles and to build an “Iron Dome”, referring to Israel’s anti-missile defense system.
The Republican policy document also pledged to ensure “election integrity” with new voting restrictions, end “gender insanity” and support for trans inclusion policies, “stop woke” government and “protect free speech” online.
Even if they weren’t going to go after abortion anymore (which they are), that is certainly enough reason to go balls to the wall in terms of keeping him out of office.
Do I think Donald Trump, personally, gives a shit about abortion either way? No, I don’t. He’s not a true believer in anything but himself and he will say and do whatever the hell it takes to get his ass back in that White House. He is, however, a very useful tool to help the actual anti-abortion extremists get what they want (even if they are supposedly very upset about this change).
Make no mistake. It doesn’t matter what the hell the damn platform says. If Trump is re-elected, our reproductive rights are at risk. They will find a way.
PREVIOUSLY:
Love you, Robyn, and all VERY IMPORTANT, though I might just remind people that Trump added a universal all-age ban on surgical health care for trans people.
Yeah, it's now official GOP policy that 35 year old trans people are too young for bodily autonomy, and if you're 36 and trans, that means early dementia has set in.
Let's not kid around: even if they're not putting the death penalty for abortion-havers in the party platform, they are overtly, explicitly saying that bodily autonomy is not a right, it's a privilege. When that's the philosophical assumption they start with, they're coming after every one eventually. The order they do that isn't about respecting individual rights. It's just about their political convenience.
Satire, but accurate:
“Trump Screens VP Candidates for any Worrisome Signs of Self-Esteem”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-screens-vp-candidates-for-any