Continuing with our review of our state GOP platform – these next two sections are worth posting in full. Some social conservatives in Illinois might be surprised that these issues were put into our state party’s platform:
EMBRACE OF THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY
Here is what follows that heading:
The family is society’s central building block. Thus, efforts to strengthen family life are efforts to improve life for everyone.
Our children need secure and nurturing environments, which are best found within the traditional family. No law should be enacted nor policy implemented without fully contemplating the effect it would have on children and their families.
Though not universally achievable, the ideal, best environment for children is within a two-parent family based on the principle of marriage between one man and one woman. The Republican Party endorses a constitutional amendment protecting our Defense of Marriage Act and enshrining in constitutional law marriage as it is defined in our ‘DOMA.'”
Our laws should strongly support and celebrate the loving commitment a man and a woman make to each other in marriage. Our laws should strongly support and celebrate a loving, married couple bringing new life into the world and rearing their children in a secure and nurturing environment from conception to adulthood. No law should undermine the importance of that union, divide that union nor unduly burden the efforts of parents to rear a family in a safe and nurturing environment.
Those persons in our society best equipped and motivated to protect and nurture children are their parents, not government bureaucrats, teachers, counselors or social workers. The Republican Party endorses legislation to re-establish the right of parents to consent to health care involving their minor children, regardless of whether such care entails diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted disease, alcoholism, drug abuse or mental illness, and particularly in the consequential arena of abortion and contraception.
The next section is this:
EMBRACING THE FIRST FREEDOM: THE RIGHT TO LIFE
Recognizing that the rights and needs of children begin at conception, the Republican Party of Illinois embraces the Right to Life of innocent unborn children and supports reform proposals protecting that right and limiting the practice of abortion in Illinois.
We believe that all innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from conception to natural death: therefore,
The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life, which cannot be infringed.
The Party affirms its support for a human life amendment to the U.S. Constitution and we endorse making clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection applies to unborn children.
We urge the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
We affirm our support for the appointment or election of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of human life.
The Illinois Republican Party opposes the fostering of utilitarian experiments which sacrifice human embryos in what appears to be a futile search for medical cures. Such experimentation undermines the right to life of every human being and offends the moral conscience of many taxpayers. We embrace the more fruitful – and completely ethical – avenues of research using cord blood, bone marrow and other adult stem cells, and we note the success of adult stem cell research in treating or curing more than 70 diseases, conditions and injuries.
In particular, we call on the Governor and General Assembly to:
- End the taxpayer subsidy for abortion;
- Require a doctor to involve a minor’s parents before aborting her unborn child;
- Outlaw the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion; and
- Enact the Illinois Born-Alive infant Protection Act guaranteeing medical assessment and appropriate medical care for babies whose birth is incidental to abortion.
