By Peter Pinedo
Washington, DC Newsroom, August 20, 2024 / 6:26 p.m.
Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago have adopted a platform that doubles support for abortion, IVF and “gender-affirming health care.”
The programme is an ambitious document drafted and approved by party delegates in election years. It is intended to outline the party’s political goals for the coming years.
The new program, which is 91 pages long and mentions the issue of abortion almost three times more often than the 2020 program, was adopted by an overwhelming majority on the first evening of the party conference.
Here are some highlights that are especially relevant for Catholics.
Enshrining Roe v. Wade
While the 2020 program stated that “every woman should have access to quality reproductive health services, including safe and legal abortion,” the 2024 program goes a step further and explicitly calls for enshrining abortion in national law by making Roe v. Wade the law.
The “reproductive freedom” item blames former President Donald Trump for overturning Roe and claims that if elected, he would “ban abortion nationwide.”
“President (Joe) Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris and Democrats are committed to restoring the reproductive rights that Trump took away from them,” the platform states. “We will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again.”
This focus on abortion is consistent with new Democratic presidential candidate Harris’ prioritization of abortion as a central campaign issue.
The program promises that a Harris-Waltz administration would “support access to FDA-approved medication abortion, appoint FDA leaders who respect science, and appoint judges who uphold fundamental freedoms.”
Like previous versions of the Democratic platform, the 2024 platform promises to repeal the Hyde Amendment, a long-standing measure that prohibits the use of federal tax money for abortion.
Previously, Republicans had passed a platform for 2024 that softened their stance on abortion by removing the “right to life” item and the call for a national law to protect unborn life.
Protect IVF
While in vitro fertilization (IVF) was not mentioned on the 2020 platform, it is mentioned six times on the new platform.
IVF is a fertility procedure to conceive a child outside of sexual intercourse. The Catholic Church considers IVF to be “morally unacceptable” because it separates the marital act from procreation and establishes “the dominion of technology” over human life.
IVF has become a hot topic since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that unborn babies conceived through IVF are human children protected by state law. Since the ruling, many leading Republicans and Democrats have strongly condemned IVF restrictions and advocated for expanded IVF protections.
(The story continues below)
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The platform accuses Republicans of “openly attacking” IVF and promises that a Democratic White House “will protect a woman’s right to access IVF.”
Wedding
The only mention of marriage in the 2024 Democratic platform is in the context of protecting “marriage equality in federal law” for LGBTQ+.
The platform criticizes Trump for appointing judges who “oppose same-sex marriage” and promises to pass the Equality Act to “codify protections for LGBTQI+ Americans and their families.”
The Equality Act would recognize sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under civil rights laws and prohibit discrimination based on those classes.
The U.S. Catholic bishops have opposed the bill, saying it advocates a redefinition of marriage and portrays gender as a mere “social construct.” The bishops have also said it would “punish” religious groups that oppose these beliefs.
“Gender-affirming care”
The platform accuses Trump of advocating “an extreme plan to punish doctors who treat transgender youth and ban gender-affirming medical treatments.”
According to the World Health Organization, gender reassignment care includes a range of interventions, including social, psychological, behavioral and medical treatments such as hormone therapy and surgery.
The platform praises the Biden-Harris administration’s actions to “protect transgender Americans’ access to health care and health insurance, including medically necessary gender-affirming care.”
“Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal bans on gender-affirming health care and respect the role of parents, families and doctors – not politicians – in health care decisions,” the platform states.
Religious freedom
The program also includes a point on “combating hate and protecting religious freedom,” in which the Democrats condemn the rise of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and promise to “maintain the separation of church and state.”
There is no mention of Christians in the program, but it says that the Democrats are “committed to religious freedom around the world” and “will continue to respect both religious freedom and other civil liberties and will not pit one against the other.”
immigration
The manifesto states that “America is a nation of immigrants” and says that the next Democratic presidential administration will push for legislation that “secures the border, reforms the asylum system, expands legal immigration, and keeps families together by supporting a pathway for the undocumented.”
Illegal immigration has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. The Washington Post reported that the number of illegal border crossings reached a historic high of 2.2 million in 2022. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there have been nearly 2 million border crossings this year, double the peak under the Trump administration.
Unlike the 2020 version, the new Democratic platform includes a section on securing the border. This section states that Democrats would advocate for additional border patrol agents, immigration judges, asylum officers and inspection technology to better detect and stop human trafficking and the flow of fentanyl into the United States across the southern border.
Peter Pinedo is CNA’s DC correspondent. Peter is a graduate of Franciscan University and previously worked for Texas Right to Life. He is a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve.
