Anti-abortion activist Kristan Hawkins is one of the latest people to clarify that the new GOP platform could, indeed, pave the way for a nationwide abortion ban.Mother Jones; Julia Rendleman/The Washington Post/Getty
If you listen to leading anti-abortion activists, you will notice they keep speaking a bit too honestly.
In drafting their platform, the GOP claimed the party does not plan to ban abortion nationwide (maybe because they know it is extremely politically unpopular). But the latest person to say that position is not, exactly, true is Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, an influential anti-abortion advocacy group.
In an interview published Monday, Hawkins told the New York Times that, contrary to some mainstream headlines, the latest GOP platform does not represent a “softening” on abortion.
Instead, Hawkins said what leading reproductive rights scholars Mary Ziegler and Rachel Rebouché told me weeks ago: The invoking of the Fourteenth Amendment in the newest GOP platform could grant full citizenship and rights to fetuses—thus offering an avenue to potentially banning abortion nationwide.
Hawkins is not the only anti-abortion advocate spelling out these contradictions. As I reported earlier this month, Ed Martin—president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, a conservative group, and one of three people the RNC and the Trump campaign appointed to run the committee that wrote the platform—also defended the new, shortened platform from charges it had weakened in its opposition to abortion because it did not explicitly call for a national ban or a “human life amendment” to the Constitution. “There’s not as many words describing it,” Martin said on his radio show, “but there’s protection under the Constitution, that life is protected.”
Later in the interview with the Times, Hawkins added that anti-abortion advocates’ long-term goal is to secure a Supreme Court opinion that would grant fetuses rights through the 14th Amendment, adding, “I don’t think that has been a hidden agenda at all within the pro-life movement.” She’s right about that: The Republican platform has, for decades, cited the Fourteenth Amendment as the key to enshrining fetal personhood in the law and banning abortion nationwide.
Trump has been nothing if not inconsistent on abortion, refusing to clarify his stance on fetal personhood or whether he would support using the Comstock Act to criminalize the mailing of abortion pills nationwide. As Hawkins told the Times: “I don’t ever think anyone has thought of President Trump as a pro-life activist, and we’ve always known that he is a politician doing what politicians do.” In a statement responding to Hawkins’ comments, Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said: “President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states to make decisions on abortion.”
It’s worth remembering, though, that despite what the Trump campaign may say, it’s groups like Hawkins’ that got us to the post-Roe reality—and that are plotting further abortion restrictions to come. “We have made strides,” she told the Times. “We continue to move forward.”
