The platform that the Republican Party is
expected to approve this week includes a
plank declaring that “the unborn child has a fundamental
individual right to life which cannot be infringed” and calling for
“a human life amendment to the Constitution” as well as
“legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s
protections apply to unborn children.” That language is closer
to the position taken by vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (and
Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin) than the one taken by
presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who says he would allow
abortion in cases of rape and incest. It is hard to see how those
exceptions can be reconciled with a “fundamental individual right
to life which cannot be infringed.”

Does it matter? As The New York Times notes,
the GOP’s two most recent presidential nominees, George W. Bush and
John McCain, were both more flexible on abortion than their party’s
platform. So were
Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan, by contrast,
took the
Ryan/Akin position, saying abortion should be illegal except
when necessary to save the mother’s life. It was under Reagan that
the current version of the abortion plank was originally
adopted:

1972
(before Roe v. Wade): no abortion plank

1976:
“We protest the Supreme Court’s intrusion into the family structure
through its denial of the parents’ obligation and right to guide
their minor children. The Republican Party favors a continuance of
the public dialogue on abortion and supports the efforts of those
who seek enactment of a constitutional amendment to restore
protection of the right to life for unborn children.”

1980:
“There can be no doubt that the question of abortion, despite the
complex nature of its various issues, is ultimately concerned with
equality of rights under the law. While we recognize differing
views on this question among Americans in general—and in our own
Party—we affirm our support of a constitutional amendment to
restore protection of the right to life for unborn children.”

1984:
“The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which
cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human
life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to
make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to
unborn children.”

That plank has remained essentially the same since then,
although it did not reflect the presidential nominee’s publicly
stated views from 1988 on. A constitutional amendment to ban
abortion is, in any case, a highly improbable scenario, and any
legislation construing the 14th Amendment to cover fetuses (such as
the bill
supported by Ryan and Akin) would be subject to Supreme Court
review in the unlikely event that Congress approved it. The
abortion plank, like the
porn plank, is aimed at appeasing social conservatives without
unduly alarming potential Republican voters who do not share their
views. The assumption is that such voters, assuming they notice the
pro-life lip service, will understand it has little practical
significance.

Newsweek columnist Kathleen Parker, in an
essay titled “What the *#@% Is Wrong With
Republicans?!,” argues
that such appeasement is a big mistake. Parker concedes that “the
human life amendment is actually a relic, having been part of the
platform since 1984,” but worries that the 2012 platform “also
includes new language for the first time declaring abortion bad for
a woman’s ‘health and well-being.'” I doubt that paternalistic
judgment will upset many voters who are not already alienated by
the nearly absolute ban on abortion that the party officially
favors. But maybe Parker is right that the temporal conjunction of
the platform’s approval with Akin’s widely ridiculed comments
about rape will make the abortion plank more damaging than it would
otherwise be.