The committee, according to two people briefed on the language, agreed on the text, “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.”

Two anti-abortion activist leaders spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal party deliberations.

The move comes as Trump imposes his priorities on the committee as he seeks to steer clear of strict abortion language, even while taking credit for setting up the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Trump appointed three of the six justices who voted in the majority to overturn the 1973 abortion rights precedent.

The abortion language was first reported by The New York Times.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA Pro-Life America president, praised the committee for reaffirming “its commitment to protect unborn life through the 14th Amendment.”

Dannenfelser stopped short of endorsing the document’s reflection of Trump’s view that the matter rests entirely with states. “Under this amendment, it is Congress that enacts and enforces it’s provisions.”

The platform is a statement of first principles traditionally written by party activists. Trump’s campaign wants the group drafting this year’s platform to produce a shorter document that excludes statements favored by many conservatives but are potentially unpopular with the broader electorate.

The platform committee begins its meeting Monday, a week before the start of the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin where Trump is scheduled to accept his third straight nomination for president.

Trump has faced months of Democratic criticism over abortion as President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has highlighted that Trump nominated half of the Supreme Court majority that struck down the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. But among the vocal abortion opponents on the platform committee, some say the aspiration of a federal ban on abortion after a certain stage in pregnancy must remain a party principle, even if it’s not an immediately attainable policy or one that necessarily helps the Trump campaign in November.

“I see that as problematic. We still need these principles clearly stated. Some of these battles are not over,” said Iowa state Rep. Brad Sherman, a platform committee member who supported Trump’s winning Iowa caucus campaign in January and also supports a federal limit on abortion.

While the abortion statement is likely to be the most contested provision in the platform, there may also be disputes over Trump’s preference for tariffs and his isolationist approach to foreign policy and U.S. involvement in global conflicts, particularly in helping Ukraine as it battles Russia.

Conservative activists who are accustomed to having a seat at the table fumed over what they said was a secretive process for selecting committee members and the meeting taking place behind closed doors.

“For 40 years, the Republican Party and the GOP platform have massively benefitted from an open and transparent process,” said Tim Chapman, the incoming president of Advancing American Freedom, a foundation headed by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump’s campaign has sought to reshape the Republican National Committee into a campaign vessel. It signaled in a memo last month from senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles that “textbook-long platforms … are scrutinized and intentionally misrepresented by our political opponents.”

Trump ally Russ Vought is serving as the policy director of the Republican Party’s platform writing committee while also leading the effort to draft the 180-day agenda for Project 2025, a sweeping proposal for remaking government that Trump said Friday he knew “nothing about” despite having several former aides involved.

Trump had supported federal legislation in 2018 that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, though the measure fell short of the necessary support in the Senate.

However, after the 2022 midterm elections, Trump blamed Republicans who held strict anti-abortion positions for the party’s failure to secure a larger House majority. He has since been critical of the most stringent abortion bans in individual states.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2023 found that about two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The poll also found that 6 in 10 Americans think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

Biden’s campaign has criticized Republicans for making the platform committee meetings in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, closed to the news media and reminded voters of Trump’s onetime support for a 20-week abortion ban.

Tamara Scott, who is one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members and also a platform committee member, said Trump could campaign on the position he holds and also embrace the platform to reflect a longer-term goal of a federal limit.

“It’s our vision. It’s our foundational principles. It’s who we are as a party,” Scott said. “I agree a platform must be clear and concise but it must convey our core principles.”

To several on the committee, that means maintaining support for an “amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” the passage first included in 1984.

Trump was urged to keep that language in the platform, according to a letter signed by leaders of groups opposed to abortion, including Dannenfelser, Ralph Reed, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder and chairman; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

That passage, once removed, would be difficult to restore in future platforms, Dannenfelser said.

“The conversation about the platform is about the future. It’s about presidential campaigns 10 years from now, and Senate campaigns and House campaigns, Republican campaigns everywhere,” Dannenfelser said. “It’s not just about this election. And that’s why it matters.”

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed from Washington.

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe says he’s not ruling out a 2020 Democratic campaign for president as he campaigns in Iowa for candidates running in the November midterm elections.

In an Associated Press interview Tuesday, McAuliffe says he’ll decide by late this year or early next year whether to seek the presidential nomination. Iowa’s precinct caucuses launch the presidential primary sequence.

McAuliffe was in Iowa for a public event for the Iowa Democratic Party promoting voter outreach ahead of the Nov. 6 elections. He also was meeting privately with Iowa Democrats ahead of the evening event in Des Moines.

McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, served as Virginia governor from 2014 until this year and touts the state’s Democratic shift during his term.

As the nation’s midsection has grown more conservative and Republican, Democrats have sometimes had to rest their hopes on well-positioned GOP contenders imploding with their own politically off-key statements.

It worked like a charm for Democrats in 2012 when Republican candidates in Indiana and Missouri blew winnable Senate races after provocative comments on rape and abortion.

But with less than four months until the 2014 election, Democrats are still waiting for new bombshells and growing more anxious about the lack of incendiary material as they try to hold enough Senate seats to keep control of the chamber. Party researchers are diligently scrubbing every transcript and public comment for a hint of fringe language that might spook moderate or independent voters.

“When you get a gift like that, you dream about another gift,” said Carter Wrenn, a North Carolina Republican strategist, referring to the 2012 Missouri and Indiana Senate results.

The best Democrats have come up with so far is Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst’s avowed belief in a possible threat to American property rights posed by an obscure global development concept known as Agenda 21. Some conservatives see the concept as the harbinger of a United Nations takeover.

“Agenda 21 is a horrible idea,” Ernst told a rural county GOP audience in November:

The non-binding resolution, signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992, urges nations to conserve open land and steer development toward more populous areas.

Ernst said last year: “The implications we could have here is moving people off their agricultural land and consolidating them into city centers, and then telling them ‘you don’t have property rights anymore.’ These are all things that the UN is behind, and it’s bad for the United States and bad for families here in the state of Iowa.”

Susan Geddes, a conservative Iowa Republican strategist, said Ernst’s characterization “is a problem for our party.” Conspiracy theories aren’t good campaign issues, she said.

“I don’t know why she’d say that,” said Geddes, a senior Iowa adviser to Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The Iowa Democratic Party has been citing the remark, and Ernst’s calls for impeaching President Barack Obama, in press releases in hopes of building a case that Ernst’s views are outside the mainstream. It’s not clear whether they are having an impact in her race against Democrat Bruce Braley, which appears to be close.

Ernst campaign spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel called the reference to the remarks “a desperate attempt to change the subject away from Braley’s liberal record.”

The bombshell problem has increased as Republicans have gotten stronger in regions such as the Midwest, which was once more evenly divided between the parties. The more conservative GOP candidates winning primaries now are more inclined to play to the party’s rightmost fringe, saying things that can trouble voters in a general election. Controversial remarks often relate to women’s issues, religion, race or government plots.

Former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott’s praise of former segregationist Republican Strom Thurmond in 2002 cost him his Senate GOP leadership status. In 2012, Missouri GOP candidate Todd Akin’s Senate campaign crumbled after he declared the female anatomy capable of preventing pregnancy in the case of “a legitimate rape.” Likewise Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s bid sank after he said pregnancies that result from “that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.”

The more cautious rhetoric in 2014 has come as a relief to national GOP leaders who want to close the Democrats’ edge with women, younger and minority voters. Last year, the party had a series of candidate training sessions on speaking carefully.

The GOP needs to gain six seats to win Senate control. In addition to Iowa, Republicans are locked in tight races in Arkansas, Colorado, Michigan, Louisiana, Kentucky and North Carolina.

“There has been a concerted effort early on to introduce these positions that Republicans hold as extreme,” said Justin Barasky, national press secretary for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Meanwhile, Republican candidates are portraying their opponents as the allies of Obama’s health insurance program.

Democrats are trying to highlight comments by North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis in 2012 about demographic changes in the state as part of what they call his “history of divisive and offensive comments.” While the ethnic population is growing, “the traditional population in North Carolina and the United States is more or less stable,” Tillis said. North Carolina Democratic consultant Gary Pearce acknowledged the remark is no game-changer.

For Democrats, the search continues for words that suggest fringe views.

“If it sticks, they’re delighted, and if it doesn’t, they move on to the next thing,” North Carolina Republican Wrenn said.