The Sovereignty of Conscience: A Conservative Argument for Choice

Executive Summary

This report presents a comprehensive analysis and strategic recommendation for the ok.gop platform concerning the issue of abortion. The current platform, titled “An Address to the Conscience of the Party,” is founded on principles of fiscal sanity, constitutional order, market-based solutions, and individual responsibility. However, it remains silent on one of the most significant intrusions of government power into private life: the regulation of reproductive decisions. This omission represents a philosophical inconsistency and a strategic vulnerability.

The central argument of this report is that the established Republican Party position on abortion is fundamentally at odds with core conservative principles of limited government and individual liberty. Polling data conclusively demonstrates that this position is also misaligned with the views of a substantial portion of the Republican electorate, particularly moderate, younger, and less religious voters. The post-Dobbs political environment, characterized by the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) strategically incoherent 2024 platform, has created a unique opportunity for a new, principled conservative voice to emerge.

This report puts forward the principle of “Personal Bodily Sovereignty” as the appropriate conservative framework for addressing abortion. This principle, rooted in the traditions of self-ownership, property rights, and individual liberty, posits that the decision to continue or terminate a pregnancy is a matter for individual conscience, not government coercion. By adopting this stance, ok.gop can resolve its platform’s current inconsistency, appeal to an underserved segment of the center-right coalition, and establish itself as a leader in defining a modern, coherent, and viable conservatism for the 21st century.

The report concludes by providing the full text of a proposed new platform plank, “Plank 7: Defending Personal Bodily Sovereignty,” along with a detailed justification for its language. This plank affirms the conservative commitment to liberty, limits the role of government to ensuring safety and access, and offers a clear, defensible position that distinguishes ok.gop from both the mainstream GOP’s coercive moralism and the progressive left’s collectivist framing of reproductive rights.

Section 1: Analysis of the OK.GOP Platform: An Appeal to Conscience and a Call for Consistency

1.1 Survey of the Existing Framework

An examination of the ok.gop website reveals a platform built upon a distinct set of modern conservative principles. Titled “OK.GOP: An Address to the Conscience of the Party,” its seven existing planks articulate a vision grounded in fiscal discipline, constitutional fidelity, and market-oriented problem-solving.1

• Plank 0 (Digital Infrastructure) and Plank 6 (Digital Census) advocate for a technologically advanced, data-driven, and fiscally responsible government.
• Plank 1 (Immigration) calls for a system based on the rule of law, market-based self-sufficiency, and civic contribution.
• Plank 2 (Fiscal Sanity) champions balanced budgets and entitlement reform, explicitly rejecting “debt-fueled populist short-termism.”
• Plank 3 (Rule of Law) emphasizes an independent judiciary and rejects political vengeance, asserting that “No one is above the law.”
• Plank 4 (Foreign Policy) promotes a “Peace Through Strength” approach based on realism and the defense of democracy.
• Plank 5 (Environmental Stewardship) favors market-based innovation over government regulation to achieve conservation goals.

Across these planks, a consistent philosophical DNA emerges. The platform champions individual agency, economic liberty, and a government strictly limited in its scope and power. It consistently prefers market mechanisms and individual responsibility to centralized state control. This ideological foundation is not merely conservative in the traditional sense; it is heavily infused with libertarian principles of individualism, limited government, and spontaneous order.2 The platform’s emphasis on “innovation over regulation” 1 and its skepticism of government intervention align closely with the libertarian belief that complex societal order arises best from the free actions of individuals rather than from central planning.2 This implicit libertarianism creates a powerful internal logic for extending these principles to matters of personal, not just economic, freedom.

1.2 The “Conscience of the Party” as a Mandate for Individual Liberty

The platform’s tagline, “Because a conscience doesn’t need caucusing,” is its most profound and defining statement.1 It serves as more than a slogan; it is a philosophical mandate. This phrase elevates individual conscience above the demands of the party apparatus, the pressure of the collective, and the machinations of caucuses. It suggests that the most important moral, ethical, and political judgments are ultimately made by the individual, for the individual.

This framing provides a powerful strategic tool. The modern abortion debate is often mired in competing moral and religious claims, with the anti-abortion side frequently arguing from a position of absolute moral certainty, often derived from specific theological interpretations.3 For a pro-choice conservative, engaging in this debate on purely moral or theological terms is often intractable. The “conscience” framework allows for a strategic pivot. It reframes the essential question away from “Is abortion morally right or wrong?” to a question that is central to conservative political philosophy: “Who decides—the sovereign individual or the coercive state?”

This approach mirrors the official position of the Libertarian Party, which holds that abortion is a “sensitive issue” with “good-faith views on all sides,” and therefore “government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration”.5 By adopting this framework,

ok.gop can validate the deeply held personal, moral, or religious objections to abortion that many conservatives hold, while simultaneously denying the state the authority to enforce those specific convictions upon the entire populace. It is a position of principled pluralism that respects individual conscience as the ultimate arbiter of personal morality.

1.3 The Glaring Omission: The Absence of Personal Liberty

For a platform so meticulously constructed around principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutional order, and market freedom, the complete silence on the government’s role in personal and bodily decisions is a stark and significant omission. The platform advocates for getting the government out of the boardroom (Plank 2, Plank 5) but says nothing about its presence in the bedroom or the examination room. A platform that champions a “virtual-first conservative future” 1 cannot credibly do so while clinging to an outdated and inconsistent view of personal liberty.

This silence creates a philosophical void. If the platform’s core appeal is to the “conscience of the party,” it must address the most profound questions of conscience an individual can face. The decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term involves a complex interplay of physical, emotional, financial, and ethical considerations that are unique to each individual. To suggest that the state, with its blunt instruments of law and coercion, is better equipped to make this decision than the individual whose body, life, and future are at stake runs counter to every other principle articulated in the ok.gop platform. To be philosophically coherent and truly speak to the “conscience of the party,” the platform must extend its belief in limited government and individual sovereignty from the marketplace to the person.

Section 2: The Conservative Case for Bodily Sovereignty: Reclaiming a Foundational Principle

2.1 Self-Ownership as the Primary Property Right

The philosophical case for a conservative pro-choice position begins with the principle of self-ownership. This concept, central to libertarian and classical liberal thought, holds that every individual possesses an absolute right of ownership over their own body, life, and faculties.6 This right is not granted by government or society; it is inherent in the nature of being a human being.2 As the philosopher John Locke, a foundational influence on American conservatism, argued, every individual has a “property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself”.7

This principle of self-ownership is the bedrock upon which all other rights are built. The right to free speech is meaningless without ownership of the mind that forms the thoughts and the mouth that speaks them. The right to property is an extension of the right to own the labor of one’s body that creates value. Libertarianism defines this as the moral view that “agents initially fully own themselves”.8 Therefore, the most fundamental, inalienable, and sacred property right is the right to one’s own body.

2.2 From Property Rights to Bodily Sovereignty

Conservatives have long championed the sanctity of private property rights, viewing them as essential for liberty and prosperity.3 The argument is straightforward: to be consistent, a philosophy that so fiercely defends an individual’s right to control their land, their capital, and the fruits of their labor must, even more fiercely, defend their right to control their own physical person. To argue that the state has a compelling interest in regulating the functions of a woman’s uterus, while simultaneously arguing it should not regulate the functions of her business, is a profound contradiction.

This report intentionally reframes the concept of “bodily autonomy” as “Personal Bodily Sovereignty.” The term “autonomy” has been co-opted by progressive movements and is often associated with a broader framework of social and economic entitlements, such as the right to a living wage or freedom from police occupation, which are antithetical to conservative principles.9 “Sovereignty,” in contrast, is a concept deeply resonant within conservative and libertarian thought. It implies supreme authority, the right to self-governance, and the power to repel invasion. Framing the issue as one of sovereignty over one’s own body aligns the principle with the libertarian ideal of self-ownership and distinguishes it from the progressive left’s collectivist interpretations.

This view is reinforced by insights from traditions often seen as hostile to it. Catholic philosophical anthropology, for instance, argues that humans are embodied beings, not disembodied spirits in a physical shell. As such, “Our bodies are us,” and “What is done to one’s body is done to that person”.11 Denying a person control over their body is a violation of their fundamental dignity and personhood. This adds a powerful moral and dignitarian layer to the political argument for sovereignty.

2.3 Choice, Character, and Capitalism

A core tenet of free-market conservatism is that liberty is essential for the development of strong moral character. As the analyst David Boaz argues, virtues like prudence, self-reliance, discipline, and temperance cannot be imposed by force; they must be cultivated through the exercise of free choice.12 When the state removes choice, it also removes the opportunity for individuals to develop good habits and make good decisions. “Big-government conservatives undermine character when they deny people the right to shape their own characters through their choices”.12

This principle applies directly to the abortion debate. A legal framework that forces a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will does not make her more responsible or virtuous; it simply treats her as an object of state policy, incapable of making her own moral judgments. True responsibility is born of freedom. It is the freedom to weigh consequences, to make difficult decisions, and to live with the outcomes of one’s choices. By seeking to legislate this profoundly personal decision, the anti-abortion position infantilizes women and undermines the very foundation of conservative virtue ethics. It reflects a “philosophy of human imperfection” 3 that mistrusts individual reason and relies on coercive authority, a stance more aligned with the paternalism of Hobbes or Burke than with the modern, liberty-focused conservatism

ok.gop espouses.3

2.4 Distinguishing Sovereignty from Collectivism

The principle of individual bodily sovereignty stands in stark contrast to the ancient metaphor of the “body politic,” a concept where the individual is seen as a subordinate part of a larger social organism, with the sovereign as its head.14 In this pre-Enlightenment view, individuals do not have inherent rights but rather functions to perform for the good of the collective, whether that be the state, realm, or city. The individual member exists to serve the body, not the other way around.

The modern anti-abortion stance, which would subordinate a woman’s body to the perceived needs of the state or a fetus, is a modern echo of this collectivist “body politic” concept. It treats the individual woman not as a sovereign person with inalienable rights, but as a “breeding pig owned by the state (or church)” 15, a mere vessel for producing future citizens. By championing Personal Bodily Sovereignty, the

ok.gop platform can position itself as the true inheritor of the American individualist tradition, which broke decisively from these older, European, collectivist forms of social organization. It affirms that in a free society, the individual is the end, and the state is merely the means to protect that individual’s rights.

Section 3: Navigating the Nuances: Life, Liberty, and the Limits of Government Coercion

3.1 The Libertarian Civil War: Acknowledging the “Hard Problem”

A principled platform must engage honestly with the strongest counterarguments. Within right-leaning thought, the abortion debate is a “hard problem” that has created a deep and persistent schism, particularly within libertarianism.16 It is essential to understand this internal conflict to formulate a defensible position. The debate hinges on when a developing fetus acquires rights and how those rights interact with the established rights of the pregnant woman. The two primary positions are:

• The Pro-Choice Libertarian Argument: This position, held by thinkers like Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, is grounded in the absolute primacy of bodily sovereignty. Rothbard argued that “no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person’s body,” meaning a woman has the right to evict a fetus from her womb at any time.15 Rand was even more direct, calling the idea of a fetus having rights “vicious nonsense” and stating that a child acquires no rights until birth.15 This view rests on the premise that the woman’s body is her sovereign property, and any uninvited entity, regardless of its potential, is a trespasser.
• The “Pro-Life” Libertarian Argument: This position, championed by figures like Doris Gordon of Libertarians for Life, argues that the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP)—the prohibition against initiating force—applies to human beings from the moment of conception. They contend that a fetus is a distinct, living human being and that abortion is therefore an act of lethal aggression against a defenseless person.15 From this perspective, “my body, my choice” is an invalid argument because the choice involves aggression against another rights-bearing individual.16

Acknowledging this deep-seated “libertarian civil war” is crucial. It demonstrates that the issue is not simple and that intelligent people dedicated to liberty can arrive at opposite conclusions. This complexity is precisely why the state is an inappropriate arbiter.

3.2 Evictionism, Departurism, and the Limits of Analogy

In an attempt to resolve this conflict, some libertarian philosophers have developed more nuanced theories. Walter Block’s “evictionism” conceptually separates abortion into two acts: the eviction of the fetus from the womb (which he argues is permissible as an exercise of the woman’s property rights) and the direct killing of the fetus (which he argues is not, unless the fetus is non-viable or has been abandoned).15 Sean Parr’s “departurism” goes further, arguing that the eviction must be done with “gentleness,” meaning it cannot be performed in a way that directly causes the fetus’s death if a non-lethal method is possible.15

While intellectually interesting, these theories highlight the profound difficulty of applying abstract philosophical principles to complex biological realities. They rely on analogies (like a trespasser in a home) that are imperfect and lead to convoluted legal frameworks that would be practically unenforceable. A prudent conservative, skeptical of utopian schemes and abstract reasoning 13, should recognize that such complex moral calculations are best left to individual conscience and are wholly unsuited for the blunt instrument of state law. The attempt to craft a perfect, universally applicable legal rule based on these analogies is precisely the kind of rationalist overreach that traditional conservatism cautions against.

3.3 The Cato Institute’s Position: The Inappropriateness of State Coercion

The Cato Institute, a leading libertarian think tank, encapsulates the most pragmatic and principled path forward. The organization has not taken an official stance on the moral status of the fetus, acknowledging that “reasonable libertarians can disagree” on the matter. However, it expresses “grave concern” about state regulation of abortion.16 This is the pivotal insight. The core issue for a political philosophy dedicated to limited government is not the moral status of the fetus, but the nature and scope of state power.

The Cato analysis correctly identifies that any prohibition on abortion will inevitably lead to a massive expansion of state surveillance and police power. It will require investigations into miscarriages, the prosecution of women and their doctors, and the creation of a legal apparatus to enforce compliance. This raises the fundamental question for any conservative or libertarian: “How much violence are we prepared to employ against people who disagree with this policy in order to enforce it?”.16 The answer, for any consistent advocate of limited government, must be that the level of state intrusion required is unacceptable. Whatever one’s personal view on the morality of abortion, a commitment to liberty must lead to the conclusion that the state cannot be trusted with the power to enforce one side of this deeply contested philosophical debate.

3.4 The Contradiction of “Pro-Life Libertarianism”

Ultimately, the “pro-life” libertarian position collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is impossible to reconcile a belief in minimal government with a policy that would require maximum government intrusion into the most private aspects of a person’s life. Enforcing a total ban on abortion would necessitate a level of state power that would make a mockery of the principles of individualism and limited government.2 It would require the state to violate the bodily sovereignty of living, breathing citizens in the name of protecting a potential life whose moral and legal status is, at best, a subject of profound disagreement. This is not a libertarian or conservative position; it is an authoritarian one. The only consistent position for a conservative who genuinely believes in limited government is to leave the decision to the individual.

Section 4: The Republican Electorate: A Statistical Portrait of a Divided Party

4.1 The Myth of the Monolithic GOP

The narrative frequently pushed by party leadership and media commentators is that the Republican Party is uniformly and unshakably “pro-life.” However, extensive polling data from multiple independent sources reveals this to be a myth. A large and persistent minority of Republican voters supports legal access to abortion, representing a significant constituency whose views are not reflected in the party’s platform. This disconnect creates a clear political opportunity for a platform like ok.gop that is willing to speak for this underserved segment of the center-right.

The following table compiles recent data on Republican views, illustrating the breadth of support for legal abortion within the party.

Table 1: Republican and Republican-Leaning Voter Views on Abortion Legality (2018-2024)

This data quantitatively shatters the illusion of a unified anti-abortion GOP. While self-identification as “pro-choice” is low, the number of Republicans who believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases is substantial, consistently hovering around 40%.17 The 2018 finding that a majority of Republicans supported the

Roe v. Wade ruling is particularly telling.22 These figures represent millions of voters whose nuanced positions are ignored by the party’s absolutist platform. This is not a fringe element; it is a massive, existing market for a more liberty-focused conservative message.

4.2 The Ideological Fault Line: Targeting the Underserved Moderate

The data reveals an even clearer picture when broken down by ideology within the Republican party. The party’s anti-abortion stance is driven almost entirely by its conservative wing. In contrast, a clear majority of moderate and liberal Republicans supports legal abortion. This ideological fault line represents the primary target audience for the ok.gop platform.

Table 2: Ideological Breakdown of Republican Views on Abortion

The implications of this data are profound. For every one conservative Republican who supports legal abortion, there are two and a half moderate or liberal Republicans who do. The current GOP platform, which reflects the 71% of conservatives who want abortion to be illegal, completely disenfranchises the 67% of moderates and liberals within the party who believe it should be legal. This is not a tenable long-term strategy for a party that needs to build a broad coalition to win national elections.

This data provides a clear strategic focus. The goal of an ok.gop pro-choice plank is not to convert the 71% of highly religious, anti-abortion conservatives.23 It is to speak directly to the two-thirds of non-conservative Republicans who are currently unrepresented and politically homeless on this issue. This is a strategy grounded in data, targeting an identifiable and substantial audience.

4.3 Demographic Trends and Future Viability

The demographic data further suggests that the GOP’s current stance is not only alienating a large part of its current base but is also jeopardizing its future. Polling shows that younger Republicans are significantly less likely to agree with their party’s hardline position than older Republicans.24 Furthermore, Republicans who are less religious are far more likely to support legal abortion.23 As the country becomes more secular and younger generations enter the electorate, a platform that demands adherence to a specific, religiously-informed moral doctrine on abortion will become increasingly untenable.

The post-Dobbs political landscape has made this liability acute. Dissatisfaction with abortion policy has surged to a record high since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, driven primarily by those who want less strict laws.21 The issue has become a top motivator for Democratic voters 25, contributing to Republican underperformance in recent elections.21 A principled, pro-choice conservative platform provides a vital “permission structure” for swing voters, independents, and moderate Republicans to remain within the conservative coalition without sacrificing a freedom they deem essential. It is a pathway to future political viability.

Section 5: The Party vs. The People: The GOP’s Evolving and Contradictory Stance

5.1 The 2024 Platform: A Masterclass in Strategic Incoherence

The Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform on abortion is a case study in political expediency and logical contradiction. Facing intense public backlash to abortion bans post-Dobbs 21, the party leadership made a calculated decision to remove explicit calls for a federal legislative ban for the first time in 40 years.26 This move was designed to allow candidates to appear moderate and claim they support “states’ rights” on the issue.

However, a closer reading of the platform reveals a more radical agenda hidden in plain sight. The document asserts: “We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights”.27 This language is not a simple affirmation of life; it is the legal basis for “fetal personhood.” As anti-abortion legal strategists and pro-choice advocates agree, if courts were to affirm that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to a fetus from conception, it would have the practical effect of banning abortion nationwide, without a single vote ever being cast in Congress.28

This amounts to a “stealth ban.” It is a fundamentally dishonest strategy that attempts to placate moderate voters with “states’ rights” rhetoric while signaling to the anti-abortion base that the ultimate goal of a national ban via the judiciary remains intact. This duplicity is compounded by the platform’s simultaneous, and absurd, claim of support for in vitro fertilization (IVF).27 Fetal personhood laws, which would grant legal rights to embryos from the moment of fertilization, are widely seen as being in direct conflict with the practice of IVF, which routinely involves the creation and disposal of embryos.28 The platform offers no explanation for how it would reconcile these mutually exclusive positions. This strategic incoherence exposes a party leadership that is no longer arguing from a position of principle, but is instead attempting to manage political fallout through obfuscation.

5.2 A Lost Tradition: The History of Pro-Choice Republicanism

The current GOP’s rigid anti-abortion stance is a relatively recent phenomenon. For decades, the party was a “big tent” that included a vibrant and influential pro-choice wing. To counter the narrative that a pro-choice position is inherently “liberal” or alien to the GOP, it is essential to reclaim this history.

Organizations like Republicans for Choice, founded in 1989 by conservative activist Ann Stone, and the Republican Majority for Choice (originally the Republican Coalition for Choice), founded the same year by former RNC Co-Chair Mary Dent Crisp, were dedicated to preserving legal access to abortion based on core Republican principles of limited government and personal freedom.22 These groups argued that the party’s statement of principles, which cherishes “freedom of expression, individual conscience, and personal privacy,” must logically encompass the option to choose abortion.31

This tradition was represented by numerous prominent Republican politicians. As of 2020, Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Shelley Moore Capito were all pro-choice Republicans who had been supported by these groups.22 They follow in the footsteps of past Republican leaders like Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.22 The existence of these figures and organizations proves that there is a legitimate, long-standing conservative and Republican tradition of supporting abortion rights. The

ok.gop platform would not be inventing a new position, but rather reviving and modernizing a lost part of the party’s heritage.

5.3 The Silencing of Dissent

The decline of these pro-choice Republican groups—the Republican Majority for Choice ceased operations in 2018, citing the party’s increasingly rigid anti-abortion platform 22—and the events at the 2024 RNC platform committee meeting reveal a party that is increasingly captured by its most extreme elements. According to accounts from committee members, the 2024 platform was pre-written by the Trump campaign and pushed through with no amendments and no substantive discussion allowed. As one member lamented, “They didn’t allow any amendments, they didn’t allow any discussion. They rolled us”.27

This is not the behavior of a healthy political party confident in its principles. It is the action of a party leadership that fears open debate and is determined to enforce ideological conformity. A party that must silence dissent is a party suffering from intellectual sclerosis. This creates a durable and necessary role for an external platform like ok.gop. When the party itself refuses to host a debate on its own “conscience,” that debate must be taken up by others. ok.gop has the opportunity to become a home for the politically disenfranchised center-right and to apply the external pressure needed to force the party to confront its own contradictions.

Section 6: A Plank for the Conscience of the Party: Defending Personal Bodily Sovereignty

6.1 Guiding Principles

The formulation of a new platform plank on this sensitive issue must be grounded in the foundational principles of modern, liberty-focused conservatism. These principles provide the philosophical coherence and strategic justification for the proposed position.

• Limited Government: The powers of the state are not infinite. They are strictly enumerated and constitutionally constrained. Government has no legitimate authority to intrude upon the most personal and private decisions of its citizens, and any such intrusion must be viewed with extreme skepticism.
• Individual Liberty: The individual, not the collective, is the basic unit of a free society. The individual’s right to life, liberty, and property is paramount. This begins with the absolute ownership of one’s own body.
• Personal Responsibility: True freedom is inseparable from personal responsibility. In a free society, individuals are responsible for their actions and must be free to make choices—and bear the consequences of those choices—without the paternalistic management of the state.
• Personal Bodily Sovereignty: The right of an individual to exercise exclusive control over their own body is the most fundamental human right, from which all other liberties are derived. It is the foundation of a free and dignified life.

6.2 Proposed Plank 7: Defending Personal Bodily Sovereignty

We affirm that Personal Bodily Sovereignty is a foundational conservative principle, rooted in the rights to life, liberty, and property. The government’s role in a free society is to protect these rights, not to violate them.

The decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term is a profound question of individual conscience, involving a complex balance of life, liberty, and personal circumstances. These are matters for an individual to weigh in accordance with their own moral, ethical, and religious beliefs, in consultation with their family, their faith, and their doctor. They are not matters for government coercion.

A government that can force a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will is a government that can force any citizen to sacrifice their body for a state-defined purpose. This is a direct assault on liberty and a dangerous expansion of state power.

Therefore, the role of law in this domain must be strictly limited to ensuring that any medical procedure, including abortion, is performed safely and that all parties are free from coercion. We reject legislative mandates—such as state-mandated waiting periods, spousal consent requirements, or laws designed to harass and close clinics—that substitute the judgment of politicians for the conscience of the individual. We likewise oppose the use of taxpayer funds to subsidize abortions, as no citizen should be forced to pay for a procedure they find morally objectionable.

A modern conservative platform must trust the individual. We trust people to run their businesses, to raise their families, and to make the most personal decisions about their own bodies. This is the essence of liberty.

6.3 Strategic Justification and Rationale

The language of this proposed plank is deliberately crafted to be philosophically coherent, politically strategic, and defensible from a conservative standpoint.

• “Personal Bodily Sovereignty”: As previously discussed, this term is used instead of “autonomy” to frame the issue in the conservative language of authority, control, and property rights, distinguishing it from the progressive left’s framework.6
• Focus on the Role of Government: The plank does not take a position on the morality of abortion itself. Instead, it focuses relentlessly on the role of government. This creates a broad coalition, allowing individuals who are personally opposed to abortion to support the plank on the grounds of limited government. It reframes the debate from a culture war issue to a constitutional one.
• Opposition to Taxpayer Funding: The inclusion of a clause opposing the use of taxpayer funds for abortion is a critical component.5 It serves three purposes: 1) It provides a key, tangible conservative credential, demonstrating fiscal discipline. 2) It respects the conscience of those who object to the procedure, consistent with the plank’s overall theme. 3) It offers a point of compromise and common ground, making the pro-choice position more palatable to a wider range of right-leaning voters.
• Emphasis on Safety and Non-Coercion: By stating that the law’s role is to ensure safety, the plank leverages pragmatic arguments about the public health dangers of illegal, “back alley” abortions, which result in higher rates of injury and death.32 This frames the position not as “pro-abortion,” but as pro-safety, pro-health, and pro-reality.
• Rejection of Specific Intrusions: Explicitly rejecting waiting periods and spousal consent laws demonstrates a serious commitment to the principle of individual sovereignty and preempts “compromise” measures that are, in reality, infringements on that sovereignty.
• Connection to Core Conservative Trust in the Individual: The final paragraph links the position directly to the broader conservative belief in individual capacity and free markets. It makes the argument that if conservatives trust people with economic freedom, they must also trust them with personal freedom. This makes the plank a logical extension of the entire ok.gop platform, rather than a standalone issue.

Conclusion

The modern Republican Party is at a crossroads. Its official stance on abortion is philosophically inconsistent with its foundational principles, politically alienating to a significant portion of its own coalition, and strategically untenable in a post-Dobbs America. This moment of institutional weakness and intellectual confusion presents a historic opportunity for the ok.gop platform to lead.

By adopting a principled pro-choice stance grounded in the conservative concept of Personal Bodily Sovereignty, ok.gop can achieve several critical objectives. It can resolve the glaring philosophical contradiction in its own platform, transforming it into a more coherent and compelling vision of modern conservatism. It can give voice to the millions of moderate, younger, and independent-minded Republican voters who have been ignored and disenfranchised by the party’s rigid orthodoxy. And it can offer a politically viable path forward that champions liberty without sacrificing principle.

The proposed plank, “Defending Personal Bodily Sovereignty,” is not a capitulation to the left. It is a confident reaffirmation of the right’s most cherished ideals: limited government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. It is an argument that a government too big to stay out of the examination room is too big, period. By making this case with clarity and conviction, ok.gop can move beyond the stale and unproductive debates of the past and begin to define a conservatism that is fit for the future—one that truly speaks to, and for, the conscience of the party.

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