Sen. Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee didn’t talk about it. Neither did her colleagues Sens. Steve Daines from Montana or Tim Scott from South Carolina. Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, didn’t bring it up. A top adviser to the former president, Kellyanne Conway, certainly didn’t — she’s been warning Republican lawmakers for months to be careful about how they talk about it. 

On the fourth and final night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, “everyday American” Diane Hendricks, a Wisconsin-born businesswoman who owns the roofing company ABC Supply, nodded at it when she said that her decision as a teenager to continue an unplanned pregnancy did not prevent her from achieving great success.

Later on, the prominent evangelical leader Rev. Franklin Graham went the furthest when offering a prayer for Vance, saying that he was “thankful for his strong stand for defending life.”

Abortion: It wasn’t something that Republicans were talking about this week — especially Trump. But the party still adopted a new policy platform in Milwaukee that opposes abortion by encouraging states to give legal rights to fetuses.

Former President Trump didn’t even laud the confirmations of three Supreme Court justices during his first term during a free-wheeling, 90-minute speech that included a greatest hits of his successes that veered into hyperbole. Trump frequently discusses his Supreme Court appointments on the campaign trail and in interviews, in the context that it led to the overturning in June 2022 of Roe v. Wade, which had for 49 years protected the federal right to an abortion. Not on Thursday night. 

This year’s programming was a notable departure from past Republican conventions, when even if the word “abortion” wasn’t invoked outright, speakers often talked about the need to “protect life” or ensure the rights of the unborn. 

In 2020, for example, a slew of speakers at the Republican National Convention were either prominent anti-abortion activists or brought up the issue in their speeches — including Trump, who went on to lose in the general election to Democratic President Joe Biden. 

“Democratic politicians refuse to protect innocent life but then they lecture us about morality,” Trump said in his speech accepting the 2020 nomination, adding, “all children, born and unborn, have a God-given right to life.”

There was no such line on Thursday night in Milwaukee from Trump or nearly anyone else this week, despite a lineup chock full of lawmakers who have supported legislation to restrict abortion or blocked legislation to protect it. It reflected the divide between the Republican Party and voters on matters related to reproductive health care, with many swing voters and sometimes even majorities of Republicans more in line with Democratic lawmakers on the issue. 

Senate Republicans recently blocked a Democratic bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and have declined to work with Democrats to enact a measure to protect contraception access, which polling shows has the support of 81 percent of voters, including 68 percent of Republicans. When Senate Democrats brought a half-page bill up for a vote last week that affirmed congressional support for abortion and other types of reproductive health care, only two Republicans cast “yea” votes, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

More than 60 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center. Two-thirds of Americans oppose classifying frozen embryos as people — something that would imperil IVF — a recent Axios-Ipsos poll showed. And according to FiveThirtyEight polling, 90 percent of Americans believe contraception, such as condoms and birth control pills, should be legal, while 81 percent said the same about intrauterine devices, or IUDs. 

Though the convention speakers weren’t talking about abortion on stage, the party’s platform, by supporting establishing legal rights for fetuses and even potentially embryos, would imperil access to abortion and IVF — including potentially nationally. 

The 16-page policy platform takes a states-centered approach to restricting abortion — this is something Trump has repeatedly said that he wants. It reads:  “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People.”

Trump said Thursday the platform is “very short compared to the long, boring meaningless agendas of the past.” 

Past Republican platforms have contained provisions calling to pass federal legislation to restrict abortion, often via measures that would set limits based on weeks of pregnancy gestation. When this year’s proposed platform did not have such legislation in it, it was seen by some as the party potentially softening its stance. But the platform — the first developed without federal protections for abortion — encourages states to pass laws granting 14th Amendment rights to fetuses and embryos. If courts affirm those rights, it could lead to abortion restrictions that apply nationally, without federal legislation. 

Ed Martin, one of the people Trump’s campaign tapped to participate in the platform-writing committee, said on a recent episode of his radio show “Pro America Report,” that the platform should be read as using the Constitution to prohibit abortion. 
“Don’t let anybody tell you there’s not protections for pro-life … there’s not as many words describing it, but there’s protection under the Constitution that life is protected,” he said. His comments were first reported by the magazine Mother Jones.