Photo: CNN In recent months, state-level Republican parties have been adapting their official 2024 platforms, and they’ve been terrifying: The Texas Republican Party wants to criminalize IVF, and appears to want the death penalty for abortion patients, while the North Carolina and Idaho parties similarly recognized IVF as murder. And if you were optimistic that the national Republican Party’s official 2024 platform would be any less draconian, unfortunately, I’ve got news for you. Allow me to introduce you to Ed Martin, the deputy policy director for the Republican National Convention's platform committee, and one of the three leaders chosen to shape the official GOP stances ahead of the convention. A new deep-dive from CNN exposes the attorney and former chair of the Missouri Republican Party as an anti-abortion extremist who used his radio show to celebrate the end of Roe, claim abortion pills are "dangerous," and call for even harsher anti-abortion policies. “If the conversation is, ‘Well, should there be a federal ban?’ And the consensus is that there shouldn’t–I disagree. I disagree with the consensus. I would like to see U.S. Senators and U.S. congressmen and women elected to office who would say, ‘Let’s ban abortion,’” Martin said on his radio show, the Pro America Report, in April, according to CNN, which reviewed dozens of episodes from 2022 to 2024. Early Tuesday, Politico reported that the Trump campaign had intervened to remove two "hardline" anti-abortion delegates from the Republican Party platform committee ahead of the convention, which takes place in Milwaukee from July 15 to July 18. Apparently, when the two South Carolina delegates ran for the committee, they insisted they'd refuse to "water down" any GOP position on abortion, marriage, or Israel. Removing them, according to the outlet, is meant to demonstrate how the party is “poised to moderate its stance on abortion at the direction of former President Donald Trump.” If only! Regardless of any gimmick the Republican Party—certainly, Trump himself—attempts to pull to hide its anti-abortion extremism, they've already exposed themselves. Trump proudly gutted Roe, would enact a national abortion ban, has suggested states should surveil and punish abortion seekers, and expressed interest in birth control restrictions. But if you're trying to appear more moderate, getting rid of two random anti-abortion delegates isn't going to help when one of your committee leaders openly wants to jail abortion patients. Let's hear more from Martin, shall we? “The true bane of the pro-life movement is the faction of fake pro-lifers who claim to believe in the sanctity of human life but are only willing to vote that way with a list of exceptions,” Martin said on his show in June 2022, in opposition to rape exceptions. NEW: Our report tonight on Ed Martin, who is helping craft the Republican Party's platform at the convention and has raised jailing women who get abortions and advocated for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest. pic.twitter.com/cBzElHhLyr — Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) July 3, 2024 In May 2022, shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision leaked, Martin spoke at length about jailing abortion patients and how to win the PR war around this. “The late Phyllis Schlafly, whom I worked so closely with, used to say, ‘If you get to claim and frame the argument, you almost certainly get to win.’ In other words, if you take their framing, it’s a woman’s right. Are you gonna put women in jail? No. It’s about a baby. Now, what do we do? Frame the argument. Own the argument,” he said. He then affirmed his support for jailing doctors who provide abortions, which is currently imposed by most…
