What the Media Missed in the Republican Platform Debacle

This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.

Republicans released their party platform in preparation for next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, and most media coverage got it dangerously wrong.

Pundits had been expecting the platform to include some kind of national abortion ban—likely a 15-week ban, since that had been the GOP position the party publicly coalesced around. What Republicans delivered instead was a radical embrace of fetal “personhood,” a complete adoption of Trumpian double-speak on abortion and further proof that overturning Roe v. Wade was part of their larger authoritarian playbook.

Instead of embracing some specific nationwide abortion ban, Republicans are set to adopt a platform at their convention that embraces “life” under the 14th Amendment. This is a very clear signal to states to proceed with total abortion bans and their own declarations that life begins at conception—like Alabama has via its state supreme court.

It also suggests congressional Republicans will move forward again with the Life at Conception Act, which would open the door for a personhood-curious Roberts Court to usher in a national abortion ban—one that includes banning in vitro fertilization and most forms of contraception via judicial fiat. The bill had 131 co-sponsors last legislative go-round.

Just because the platform doesn’t say “national abortion ban” doesn’t mean the platform doesn’t have a national abortion ban baked into it.

You’d never know how radical the Republican position on abortion is, though, if you followed any of the national coverage on the platform rollout. By their accounts, Republicans have moderated on the issue, likely given the massive electoral backlash they’ve faced since overturning Roe. This is journalistic malpractice. As is uncritically reporting that the GOP platform promises to support access to birth control and IVF, despite multiple immediate threats to the contrary. That includes Project 2025’s plan to reanimate the Comstock Act to ban or restrict all sorts of reproductive health care, including contraception.

The media getting the GOP platform radicalization on abortion wrong is part of the larger problem of the media getting the entire radicalization of the conservative movement wrong. The Supreme Court just pulled off one of the greatest power grabs and constitutional heists for conservatives in history, one so big it threatens democracy itself. And it’s all possible thanks in large part to a media willing to play along.

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