Ted Cruz intends to use the brave haul of delegates whom he collected as the number two contender in this year’s primary contest to fight over the GOP platform. During a radio interview this week, as Politico reported, the host

asked Cruz if he could promise to listeners to ensure Republicans in Cleveland do not “screw around with the party platform and remove the abortion plank, or alter it.”

“You have my word. One of the reasons that we are continuing to work to elect conservatives to be delegates, even though Donald has the delegates to get the nomination, we intend to do everything we can to fight for conservative principles to prevent Washington forces from watering down the platform,” Cruz said. “The platform is a manifestation of what we believe as a party, and I think it is important that it continue to reflect conservative values, free-market values, constitutional liberties, Judeo-Christian principles, the values that built this country, and that is exactly what I intend to fight for.”

As Politico noted, “Trump said in April that he would push for exceptions to the party’s platform on abortion to include rape and incest. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said days later that the platform is ‘up to the delegates at the convention’ and that he would expect it to remain the same.”

Trump clearly believes that such exceptions are politically necessary. But is this really true? The GOP has had this pro-life platform for every presidential election since Ronald Reagan’s in 1980, and the party’s stance — in principle, if sadly not yet in practice — that every unborn life deserves protection did not stop Reagan from winning twice, or George H.W. Bush from getting elected. The platform didn’t stop George W. Bush from winning twice, and no observer has plausibly argued that tepid pro-lifers like Bob Dole, John McCain, or Mitt Romney were voted down because of the GOP’s pro-life platform.

But a party’s platform matters, which is why people fight over it. It expresses the abstract principles that invigorate party activists, and the vision that should inform a winner’s administration — and in particular, on this issue, the winner’s approach to selecting jurists who will serve on courts for life and exercise (sadly, de facto) the power of remaking our laws and rewriting our Constitution.

Our Constitution was once inscribed in ink; now it’s effectively sketched in pencil, as courts revise its meaning to suit the current political mood. If we as conservatives are to take a stand against that dangerous practice, and insist on restoring the clear and original meaning of our nation’s governing document, we need to keep our principles straight — at least when we launch a campaign. Like a math equation, political programs can go badly askew because of fundamental errors, errors in the assumptions on which those programs are based.

So what does it say when a party opposes abortion — really opposes it as evil, not merely as regrettable, but as a fundamental wrong that poisons the life of a nation? It means that we regard unborn life as morally comparable to other human life, so we will fight for laws that are as protective as possible.

By the way, pro-lifers, please stop using the enemy’s language. We don’t seek more “restrictive” abortion laws, but more “protective” ones, okay?

Our goal should be to extend the protective blanket of law over those who are the most vulnerable, to speak as a community in defense of those who cannot speak for themselves. Today in our culture of death that isn’t just the unborn; it is also the sick and handicapped, and those with terminal illnesses.

We have seen that in “civilized” nations with Christian histories such as Belgium and the Netherlands, euthanasia has quickly metastasized from a rare, exceptional practice into a routine, callous habit. That’s how bad exceptions make terrible law. William Briggs documented here at The Stream how doctors in Belgium and the Netherlands are now seeking ways to turn terminal patients into organ transplant farms. We have seen from the Planned Parenthood videos how unborn Americans are already the prey of this practice.

The pro-life party in America should seek the maximum protection for unborn life, and stand for it as a witness — as civil rights demonstrators stood firmly against all racial bias. The Freedom Riders did not confront Southern sheriffs and police dogs, and call for racial equality with certain exceptions. They didn’t surrender their fundamental principle in advance by admitting that in certain cases, racial bias might just make sense, or be too deep-rooted to counter. If they had, they might well have failed.

It takes an immovable object to restrain an “irresistible” force. And the slide down the slippery slope to the total contempt for human life in the post-Christian West accelerates every day — as Richard Weikart documents in his chilling new book The Death of Humanity.

Ted Cruz believes that we must drive a stake in the side of the mountain, hold tight to our ropes and stop the slide. We must draw a deep and indelible line that says, “Thus far and no further.” We will not accept the callous destruction of any innocent life, regardless of the circumstance. If we are not willing to say this, our enemies will realize we are unserious, and escalate their attack. Yes, the situation of a woman who was made pregnant by rape is tragic; but if we let our natural, laudable sympathy for such women erase our principle, it will be gone the next time we need it. The next exception and the next will present itself, each time eroding our resolve.

Note that the other side, the pro-choice movement has prevailed in the courts for 40 years by refusing every exception. The favored pro-choice slogan is “Abortion on Demand Without Apology.” Feminists even oppose bans on sex selection abortions. Such outrageous demands would seem — to pragmatists like Mr. Trump — politically foolish. And yet the feminist strategy works — because this debate is not one of cost/benefit or prudence, but between two starkly irreconcilable claims: the assertion that a woman has absolute reproductive autonomy, and the fact that a fetus is human, with the right to life. There is no gray area here, no room to split the difference. We simply must choose. “See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.” (Deut. 30: 15)