Michael Kinsley: Republican Platform's Abortion Plank Has A Long History
Michael Kinsley, a former editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, is a Bloomberg View columnist.
It's puzzling that people are shocked that, on abortion, the Republican platform contains no exceptions for rape or incest or to protect the health of a woman.
"The question of abortion is one of the most difficult and controversial of our time." That sweet reason is from the 1976 Republican platform, three years after Roe vs. Wade, which ruled that a woman's right to abortion is protected by the Constitution. The platform went on in the same moral-relativist vein. "There are those in our Party who favor complete support for the Supreme Court decision," and those who want that decision "changed by a constitutional amendment." Just to leave no one out, it went on to note that "others have yet to take a position" while others still fall somewhere in between.
It called for "public dialogue on abortion," and then, in a surprising and unexplained reversal, endorsed a "constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."..