Brown County, TX
Republican Party

2006 STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY PLATFORM

• Party Candidates and the Platform on Protecting Innocent Human Life - We urge the Republican Party of Texas to support, financially or with in-kind contributions, only those candidates or nominees of this party who support the entire platform on protecting innocent human life. We urge the members of the State Republican Executive Committee to make such changes to the by-laws of that committee to make this action binding on the Republican Party of Texas.
• Partial Birth Abortion - The Republican Party of Texas commends President Bush and Congress for passing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban in 2003. We call on The Congress of the United States to eliminate from the jurisdiction of each and every federal court any and all cases involving challenges to state and federal laws banning Partial Birth Abortion.
• Right To Life - All innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from fertilization to natural death; therefore, the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We affirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse making clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection applies to unborn children. We oppose the use of public revenues and/or facilities for abortion or abortion–related services. We support the elimination of public funding for organizations that advocate or support abortion. We urge the reversal of Roe v. Wade. We affirm our support for the appointment and election of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. We are opposed to genocide, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. We oppose legislation allowing the withholding of nutrition and hydration to the terminally ill or handicapped.
  Until our final goal of total Constitutional rights for the unborn child is achieved, we urge the Texas Legislature in consideration of our state’s rights to enact laws that restrict and regulate abortion including:
  
  
  1. parental and informed consent;
  2. prohibition of abortion for gender selection;
  3. prohibition of abortion due to the results of genetic diagnosis
  4. licensing, liability, and malpractice insurance for abortionists and abortion facilities;
  5. prohibition of financial kickbacks for abortion referrals;
  6. prohibition of partial birth and late term abortions; and
  7. enactment of any other laws which will advance the right to life for unborn children.

• Choose Life - We ask the Texas legislature to pass legislation giving pro-life Texans the opportunity to purchase "Choose Life" license plates.
• Parental Consent - We call for the electoral defeat of all judges who through raw judicial activism seek to nullify the Parental Consent Law by wantonly granting bypasses to minor girls seeking abortions, and thereby thwarting the will of the Texas Legislature and people. We support the addition of a legislative requirement for the reporting of judicial bypasses to parental consent on an annual basis to the Department of State Health Services and such reports shall be made available to the public. We call on the Legislature to require parental consent for emergency contraception (referred to as the Morning After pill).
• Protection of Women’s Health - Because of the personal and social pain caused by abortions, we call for the protection of both women and their unborn children from pressure for unwanted abortions. We commend the Texas Legislature for the passage of the Woman’s Right to Know Act, a law requiring abortion providers, prior to an abortion, to provide women full knowledge of the physical and psychological risks of abortion, the characteristics of the unborn child, and abortion alternatives. We urge the state government and the Department of State Health Services to ensure that all abortion providers are in compliance with this informed consent law and to ensure that all pregnancy centers and other entities assisting women in crisis pregnancies have equal access to the informational brochures created by the Department of State Health Services.
• Alternatives to Abortion - We commend those who provide alternatives to abortion by meeting the needs of pregnant women and providing adoption services and support the government funding of such services. In order that all pregnant women may be aware of the alternatives to abortion in their community, we urge the Department of State Health Services to provide an adequate quantity of The Woman’s Right to Know Resource Directory to any organization or entity in the state that works with pregnant women.
• RU 486 - We urge the FDA to suspend approval of RU-486 and oppose limiting the manufacturer and/or distributor’s liability because this abortifacient drug has proven to be physically dangerous to women.
• Morning After Pill – We oppose the sale, use, and dispensing of the “Morning After Pill”, also known as emergency contraception, due to its potential to act as an abortifacient and its potential to endanger the life of the mother.
• Gestational Contracts - We believe that commercial surrogacy is a legal and ethical free-fall and the rental of a woman’s womb makes child bearing a mere commodity to the highest bidder. We call upon the Texas Legislature to rescind House Bill 724 as passed by the 78th Texas Legislature.
• Unborn Child Pain Protection - We support legislation that requires doctors to provide information to a woman who is twenty or more weeks pregnant about the nervous system development of her unborn child, information about the unborn child’s ability to feel pain, and to provide pain relief for her unborn child in the tragic circumstance that she wishes to continue with the abortion.
• Unborn Victims of Violence Legislation - We commend the federal government and the Texas Legislature for the passage of laws that recognize unborn children as secondary victims in crimes committed against pregnant women. We urge the State to ensure that the Prenatal Protection Law is interpreted accurately.
• Abortion Clinics - We call for legislation that holds abortion clinics to the same health and safety standards, regulations, and inspections as other medical facilities and that subjects the clinics to the same risks of malpractice.
• Abortion Requirements for Hospitals - We ask that the Texas Legislature pass legislation giving hospitals in Texas authority to refuse to perform abortions and that all levels of government refrain from requiring any hospital to perform an abortion.
• Conscience Clause - We believe that doctors, nurses, pharmacists, any employees of hospitals and insurance companies, health care organizations, medical and scientific research students, and any employee should be protected by Texas law if they conscientiously object to participate in practices that conflict with their moral or religious beliefs, including but not limited to abortion, the prescription for and dispensing of drugs with abortifacient potential, human cloning, embryonic stem cell research, eugenic screenings, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration. We call on the Texas Legislature to pass legislation to strengthen and clarify the current conscience clause in the Occupational Code to include the above-mentioned persons and practices.
• Fetal Tissue Harvesting - We support legislation prohibiting experimentation with human fetal tissue and prohibiting the use of human fetal tissue or organs for experimentation or commercial sale. Until such time that fetal tissue harvesting is illegal, any product containing fetal tissue shall be so labeled. Stem Cell Research - We commend the President for banning most government funding of human embryo stem cell harvesting. We oppose any legislation that would allow for the creation and/or killing of human embryos for medical research. We encourage stem cell research using cells from umbilical cords, from adults, and from any other means which does not kill human embryos. We oppose any state funding of research that destroys/kills human embryos. We encourage the adoption of existing embryos. We call for legislation to withhold state and/or federal funding from institutions that engage in scientific research involving the killing of human embryos or human cloning.
• Human Cloning - Each human life, whether created naturally or through an artificial process, deserves protection. We confirm that somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is the process by which a human being is cloned, and that SCNT creates a unique human being with the same properties of a human embryo created through the union of sperm and egg. We seek a ban on human cloning for reproductive purposes (where a cloned human embryo, created through SCNT, is implanted in a womb and the human clone is birthed). We also seek a ban on research cloning (where a cloned human embryo, created through SCNT, is created, grown in the laboratory, and then destroyed when its stem cells are extracted for research purposes). Furthermore, criminal penalties should be created and experimenters prosecuted who participate in the cloning of human beings. No government or state funding should be provided for any human cloning.
• Patient Protection – We support patients’ rights by calling on the state legislature to amend the Advance Directive Act to establish due process of law and ensure that a physician’s decision to deny life saving treatment against the patient’s will or advance directive is not due to economic or racial discrimination or discrimination based on disability. We also support the passage of legislation to amend the Advance Directive Act by requiring hospitals intending or threatening to withdraw life-sustaining treatment against the patient’s wishes or their advance directive to continue all treatment and care for such patients pending transfer to another facility.
• Gene Manufacturing – We support a ban on research that alters human DNA in living human beings at any stage of life, including the altering of artificial, manufactured, and natural genes and chromosomes.
  
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