Iowans Tamara Scott and Brad Sherman are among some 20 Republicans who signed an unofficial “minority report” on the abortion plank of the Republican National Committee’s platform.

Scott has represented Iowa as RNC committeewoman since 2012 and is the Iowa state director of Concerned Women for America. Sherman is a pastor and first-term member of the Iowa House. He voted for the near-total abortion ban Republican lawmakers approved in July 2023 (which will soon be enforced) and has co-sponsored even more extreme bills to prohibit abortion.

Loyalists to former President Donald Trump wrote the RNC’s new platform and rammed the draft through the National Republican Platform Committee using a closed process, with no subcommittee meetings, little time to review or debate the document, and no votes on proposed amendments. The abortion plank now reads:

Republicans Will Protect and Defend a Vote of the People, from within the States, on the Issue of Life

We proudly stand for families and Life. 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. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).

Abortion rights advocates such as Jessica Valenti have correctly noted that this language suggests the U.S. Constitution protects fetal personhood, which would justify a national ban on abortion.

However, the draft also endorses the idea of states regulating abortion, removing previous RNC platform language that called for new federal laws and a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution. In addition, the Trump draft uses the non-medical phrase “Late Term Abortion” to wrongly imply Republicans aren’t seeking to ban the procedure early in pregnancy. In fact, most GOP-controlled states have already enacted near-total abortion bans.

Some have argued that the platform fight is merely “political theater” designed to make Trump appear reasonable on an issue where the majority of voters oppose the GOP stance. That said, leaders of social conservative groups have vocally opposed the changes. They include Tony Perkins, an RNC platform committee member from Louisiana who also leads the Family Research Council. More than 30 state or national organizations endorsed the “Platform Integrity Project,” which drafted the would-be “minority report.” Excerpts from that statement:

Today we observe the vitality of a more recent but analogous set of commitments, embodied most prominently in the promise of the Republican Party to preserve the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death. That commitment made its way into the platform of 1976, twelve decades after that original session in Philadelphia. That commitment to a human life amendment and a call for the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection application to children before birth has been repeated in every platform since and, by this declaration of principle, we extend it now.

In no season, under no rationale spurred by the exigencies of a political moment, can or should we abandon the high principles that have created and sustained this party, with God’s grace, into a third century.

In the coming years, we pledge ourselves to continue to work for the good of every child, every parent, and every family. We rededicate ourselves to the core policy positions endorsed through deliberation and transparency with ever-increasing clarity in previous platforms, with respect to the funding of abortion domestically and internationally, the expansion of alternatives to abortion, support for credits for adoption and all children, ending the exploitation of embryonic human beings, and above all recognizing the application of 14th amendment protections to our developing offspring. These are issues for the ages and not for any single cycle in our national life.

I wrote “would-be” minority report because the dissenters lack the numbers to bring this report to the floor when the RNC approves the platform, scheduled to happen on July 15. The RNC’s Rules Committee just voted to increase the threshold for minority reports from 25 percent to 35 percent of members, David Weigel reported for Semafor.

As of July 12, only 20 platform committee members, including Scott and Sherman, had signed the statement objecting to the abortion language. That’s not even 25 percent of the 112 platform committee members (two from each state and territory) and only about half the support they would need under the RNC’s new 35 percent rule.

Perkins acknowledged on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program on July 15 that RNC delegates will approve the platform as written. In a face-saving move, he alluded to the assassination attempt against Trump as the reason for dropping the fight over the abortion plank: “This convention has changed because of what happened on Saturday.” Perkins vowed, “there will be further conversations, I can assure you, over what took place last week.”

I haven’t seen any public comments from Scott about the platform. Concerned Women for America is among the groups endorsing the Platform Integrity Project.

In two newsletters written before Trump was shot at in Pennsylvania, Sherman decried what he called “the abuse of the process” for considering the RNC platform. In his words:

• We didn’t get the document until Monday and a vote was forced without having time to read and consider it.
• We were led to believe there would be subcommittees but apparently that was never the plan.
• With no subcommittees, there was no opportunity to offer amendments to the platform.
• During the minimal time we had possession of the document, our ability to communicate and collaborate as delegates was restricted because our phones and electronic devices were sequestered.
• Discussion on the floor had been limited to only 1 minute per person. Many people objecting didn’t get to finish their point.
• Discussion was cut off after only a few minutes by a call for the vote with many people waiting in line. So much for the promise that all would have opportunity to speak.

Sherman followed up by explaining in more depth why he opposes leaving abortion regulation to the states. “This statement about life in the new platform is, in itself, a contradictory statement that lacks basic logic. It cites the 14th Amendment (a federal document) on protecting life, and then ignores logic by declaring states are now free to protecting those rights.” Sherman believes “we must fight for personhood and life at the state level while we make our case for personhood at national level as well. It is the logical thing to do.”

Sherman’s perspective on reproductive rights, as expressed during Iowa House floor debate in July 2023, is that “Everyone is free not to have sex. If they’re not prepared to have a baby, they shouldn’t have sex, if they’re that concerned about it. I will stand for everyone’s right to practice abstinence.”

Sherman is not seeking re-election to the legislature due to a death in his family last year. The candidate he endorsed, Judd Lawler, won the GOP primary to represent House district 91, a Republican-leaning seat covering Iowa County and parts of Johnson County outside of Iowa City and Coralville.

UPDATE: As expected, RNC delegates approved the platform on July 15. The same day, Julianne McShane reported for Mother Jones that one of the platform’s authors insisted the document does call for a national abortion ban.

A day after the adoption of the platform, 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—appeared to suggest on his radio show, Pro America Report, that the platform signals support for a federal abortion ban: “It’s got protections for pro-life. Don’t let anybody tell you there’s not protections for pro-life,” Martin said. “There’s not as many words describing it, but there’s protection under the Constitution, that life is protected.” […]

Martin also touts the platform’s “opposition to a late term abortion, however you define that.” For him, though, there’s no ambiguity in what that term—which is not, in fact, used by medical professionals—means. In what are perhaps his most striking comments, he says, “I call a late term abortion any abortion that is done after the baby is conceived, myself, in part because the term ‘late term abortion’ and some of the distinction of trimesters and all that was Roe v. Wade construct—it was made-up,” he says. “It was a made-up way to make us think past the sale, that there’s something that’s not a baby, not a baby, not a baby. Ah, you get to the third trimester, now it’s a baby? That’s nonsense.”

“Anyway, the pro-life stuff is great,” Martin concludes on the radio episode. “It’s strong.” (You can listen to his full comments here, beginning just after the nine-minute mark.)

SECOND UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the Iowa GOP’s 2024 platform does not endorse a federal abortion ban. Excerpt: “We believe that life begins at conception and must be protected to natural death. We believe all such issues protecting the right to life belong under the constitutional authority of the state, and not the federal government.”

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Top image of Iowa’s RNC Commmitteewoman Tamara Scott at the Republican Party of Iowa’s state convention on May 4, 2024 was cropped from a photo first posted on U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ political Facebook page. Top image of State Representative Brad Sherman was first published on his campaign Facebook page in 2021.