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GOP Platform Broadly Pro-Life, Pro-Family

WASHINGTON, September 1, 2004 (culture-of-life.org/LifeSiteNews.com) - The Culture of Life Foundation has released its assessment of the 2004 Republican Party platform, approved Tuesday at their national convention. Austin Ruse, president of the Foundation, says the platform "is a homerun for pro-lifers."

The GOP vigorously endorses U.S. President George W. Bush's promotion of abstinence: "Abstinence from sexual activity is the only protection that is 100 percent effective against out-of-wedlock pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, including sexually transmitted HIV/AIDS." The party recommends increasing abstinence education spending by 100 percent.

In the section titled Protecting Marriage, the GOP endorses the President's call for a constitutional amendment to ban homosexual "marriage." "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization, the union of a man and a woman in marriage," the platform reads. "Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country, and anything less than a Constitutional amendment, passed by the Congress and ratified by the states, is vulnerable to being overturned by activist judges."

The party vigorously defends the unborn: "As a country, we must keep our pledge to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence. That is why we say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed." The platform calls for a constitutional amendment to protect the unborn: "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

Ruse points out that, although the platform is dominated by national defence and foreign policy, even within these issues is a pro-life agenda: "Any effort to address global social problems must be firmly placed within a context of respect for the fundamental social institutions of marriage and family. We reject any treaty or convention that would contradict these values. For that reason, we support protecting the rights of families in international programs and oppose funding organizations involved in abortion."

The platform also suggests foreign spending should be directed towards Uganda and other successful programs which foster the abstinence message.

On the ethics of cloning and stem cell research, the document quotes President Bush when it states: "the ethics of medicine are not infinitely adaptable. There is at least one bright line: We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of others."

The platform is strongly in support of President Bush's policy to limit funding of destructive stem-cell research: "We strongly support the President's policy that prevents taxpayer dollars from being used to encourage the future destruction of human embryos. In addition, we applaud the President's call for a comprehensive ban on human cloning and on the creation of human embryos solely for experimentation."

Read the 94-page party platform (PDF format) at:
http://www.gop.com/media/2004platform.pdf

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