Reporting indicates that some at the RNC and in President Trump’s inner circle see taking a hardline as a mistake. According to NBC News, the campaign is taking an active role in stopping the party from moving what it sees as too far right on abortion and marriage. And according to the Times, “In the two years since the Supreme Court that Mr. Trump transformed decided to overturn Roe, he has grown ever more convinced that hard-line abortion restrictions are electoral poison."
That’s not to say that Trump is not an anti-abortion extremist. He has reportedly expressed private support for a national 16-week abortion ban and in the 2016 campaign made a promise to sign a 20-week abortion ban into law. He has taken credit for appointing the justices that voted to overturn Roe, and as president took steps to curtail abortion access.
FRC has also recruited the support of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who recently told Perkins in an interview, “I think it’s a mistake for Republicans to avoid such an important critical issue. And I know it’s controversial,” adding “I think it is so central to who we are as Americans to understand the value of every human life."
Project 2025, of which FRC is a partner organization, is an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration. The effort involves more than 100 partner organizations, and its nearly 900-page policy book — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — represents a major threat to democracy.
Media Matters has extensively documented Project 2025’s extreme anti-reproductive rights agenda. Project 2025 has laid out policy plans in their Mandate for Leadership to heavily restrict access to abortion and contraceptives, including by removing the term “abortion” from all federal laws and regulations, reversing approval of abortion medications, punishing providers by withdrawing federal health funding, and restricting clinics that provide contraception and STD testing. Partner organizations of Project 2025, like anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America, have gone even further in encouraging bans on abortion and contraceptives and even suggesting limiting access to or banning IVF and surrogacy.