Dear Editor: I wonder whether some of your readers have read and understand the official 2016 platform of the Republican Party, or are they one-issue voters. Some seem to be concerned only with “restoring a Culture of Life” and while I too oppose abortion, I have read the full text of the Republican Party platform and find that it contains several provisions which, if actually carried out by their victorious candidates, would make for a rather difficult life for those infants spared from abortion, and for their parents.

In fact, if taken literally, the platform implies that a Republican president would have to actually allow abortions to proceed in states where such clinics now exist. I say this because the platform states, and I quote directly: “He (President Obama) defies the laws of the United States by refusing to enforce those with which he does not agree.”

So, logically, the platform is saying that all laws should be enforced – even the Roe v. Wade decision – by President Trump, even if he disagrees with “legal abortion,” or else he would be just as wrong as they say that President Obama is. I’m not making this up.

The platform also says that if a national sales tax or value-added tax were to be enacted, the 16th (Income Tax]) Amendment should be repealed. That would be great for millionaires and billionaires – no tax at all on a million-dollar-a-year income, while the average “middle class” wage earner will be paying a sales tax on most of her purchases, even on the necessities of life. Millionaires will avoid this tax because they already have all the necessities and most of the luxuries of life. It is an established fact that millionaires and billionaires spend a smaller percentage of their total annual income than do people at the lowest levels of the economy, who often depend upon credit cards and bank loans to get from month to month.

So, yes, the Republican platform is strongly pro-new life, but short on concern for lives which are already being lived out. The Republicans would either abolish or make the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau subject to congressional appropriations, which means use of their favorite term – “defunding” – if they feel that the Bureau is doing too good of a job at protecting post-born life. All of this is in the Republican platform, the full text of which is available for free on the Internet. Please read it before you decide for whom to vote. Thank you.

GARRETT DEMPSEY

Whitestone