The plank, or we walk

National | Pro-lifers warn GOP: No wavering on platform language | Joe Maxwell

No deletions. No changes. Or no deal. That's what a broad coalition of 12 pro-life leaders said on May 14 as they released a "statement of solidarity" in support of readopting at the San Diego convention the same pro-life plank that the Republican Party ran on in 1984, 1988, and 1992.

"It must be adopted in 1996 without any change or deletion," the statement, which ran in the May 15 issue of the Washington Times newspaper, said. "There has been considerable media comment about proposals to change this language. Such comments show that any change or deletion would be interpreted as a retreat from the Republican Party's principled position."

The statement was signed by: Gary Bauer (Family Research Council); Judie Brown (American Life League); Charles Colson (Prison Fellowship); James Dobson (Focus on the Family); D. James Kennedy (Coral Ridge Ministries); Beverly LaHaye, (Concerned Women for America); Richard Land (Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission); Richard John Neuhaus (First Things); Adrian Rodgers (Bellevue Baptist Church); Phyllis Schlafly (Republican National Coalition for Life); Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation); and J.C. Willke (Life Issues Institute). The statement couldn't have come at a better time for pro-lifers, who over the past several weeks have seen the moral momentum coming from the partial-birth abortion ban evaporate.