When can you deliberately kill an innocent human being?

Answer: Never.

But that is not what the Republican Party says in the new platform it approved at its convention this week.

When President Ronald Reagan was running for reelection in 1984, the Republican Party adopted a platform that unequivocally called for the legal protection of all human life – from the moment of conception to natural death.

"The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," said that platform. "We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

Each Republican National Convention through 2016 adopted a platform reiterating this exact point. (In 2020, when the COVID pandemic "significantly scaled back the size and scope" of the convention, the party did not draft a new platform.)

The Republican platform Donald Trump ran on in 2016 stated the following: "The Constitution's guarantee that no one can 'be deprived of life, liberty or property' deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence's proclamation that 'all' are 'endowed by their Creator' with the inalienable right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to children before birth."

The 14th Amendment plainly declares that no state may "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" – and then gives the federal Congress the "power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."