Republican Abortion Platform Rejects Exceptions for Rape and Incest

The Fox News panel discusses the Todd Akin scandal, and the discussion inevitably moves toward the GOP's "extreme" position on abortion. Krauthammer notes that the rejection of exceptions for rape and incest have always been in recent Republican platforms, but Democrat demagoguing on social issues has heightened the focus this time around. And the Akin scandal is the gift the keeps on giving.

At the New York Times, "G.O.P. Approves Strict Anti-abortion Language in Party Platform":

Even as the Republican establishment continued to call for Representative Todd Akin of Missouri to drop out of his Senate race because of his comments on rape and abortion, Republicans approved platform language on Tuesday calling for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion with no explicit exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

The anti-abortion plank, approved by the Republican platform committee Tuesday morning in Tampa, Fla., was similar to the planks Republicans have included in their recent party platforms, which also called for a constitutional ban on abortions. The full convention is set to vote on the party’s platform on Monday.

While Republican officials stressed that the plank did not go into granular details, saying that they were better left to the states, the language of the plank seems to leave little room for exceptions to the abortion ban. It states that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” said the draft platform language approved Tuesday, which was first reported by CNN. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

The timing of the approval of the Republican anti-abortion plank was awkward for Mitt Romney, who has denounced Mr. Akin’s comments about rape and abortion and who has said that he supports exceptions to allow abortions in cases of rape. And it comes as his selection of his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, was already drawing scrutiny for his support for a more absolute ban on abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.

RELATED: At the Los Angeles Times, "Todd Akin touts support from crusader who espoused theories on rape" (via Memeorandum).