Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.)

Yesterday we parsed the section of the GOP platform that focused on D.C., but our fair city also made an appearance in another part of the party’s official ideological document—in the section on stopping abortion:

We call for legislation to ban sex-selective abortions – gender discrimination in its most lethal form – and to protect from abortion unborn children who are capable of feeling pain; and we applaud U.S. House Republicans for leading the effort to protect the lives of pain-capable unborn children in the District of Columbia.

This of course refers to the recent attempt led by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) to ban abortions in D.C. after 20 weeks, which failed to attract the needed votes to pass the House.

Abortion remains a contentious issue in D.C., mostly because congressional Republicans have used a variety of means to limit access to abortions for residents. Republicans have consistently backed the ban on the use of local funds for abortions; when they retook the House in 2010, reimposing the ban after Democrats had lifted it was one of their first orders of business.

The D.C. Republican Party said in its recommendations to the 2012 GOP platform committee that it was not taking any positions on abortion due to “various views in our Party on right to life/choice.”