Here‘s why no RNC speakers are mentioning one of the GOP’s biggest wins of the century

18 July 2024

The Republican Party had been promising for decades to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed pregnant individuals the right to have an abortion. Yet despite finally accomplishing that goal, the GOP has been noticeably quiet about it at this week's Republican National Convention (RNC).

According to Politico, the lack of discussion about Roe has been frustrating for some members of the GOP's socially conservative faction. Some anti-abortion activists attending the convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin suggested to the outlet that they felt betrayed by their party's sudden pivot away from restricting abortion access.

“We would have loved for [the GOP] to stay a pro-life party,” anti-abortion activist Anastasia Rogers said. “Ultimately, it boils down to ‘your state, your decision,’ and that sounds a lot like ‘your body, your choice’ to me.”

The absence of anti-abortion messaging at the RNC is a relatively new development, as both former President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have been trumpeting the end of Roe as a crowning achievement for the party. In May of last year, the former president boasted on his Truth Social account that he alone was responsible for the end of guaranteed abortion rights.

"After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade," Trump wrote. "Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing."

Since then, the GOP has pivoted to not being explicitly against abortion, but leaving it up to individual states to decide. To date, 14 states have fully banned the practice outright, and seven others have partial bans on the books. But this has proved politically costly in battleground states: When Arizona's Supreme Court revived a Civil War-era abortion ban within the Grand Canyon State, the outrage was so severe that one Republican state lawmaker voted with all Democrats in the legislature to overturn it. The repeal bill was eventually signed into law by Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs.

"I am disgusted today. Life is one of the tenants of our Republican platform," Rep. Rachel Jones (R) said after the law was repealed. "To see people go back on that value is egregious to me."

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who is the 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee, also notably distanced himself from his past anti-abortion position. He was recently caught deleting a statement from his website that he was "100 percent pro-life," and didn't mention abortion once in his Wednesday speech to the RNC.

This may be due to abortion rights' undefeated streak in state-level referendums since the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling that overturned Roe. Even voters decidedly red states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Ohio have voted to protect abortion rights when the issue was on the ballot. Floridians will be voting on abortion rights this November.

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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