How do you or did perceive candidate Trump's position on abortion

[HondurasKeiser]

I did not say that government should not exist or serves no purpose. I said we have a government whose authority over individuals is by definition limited to specific purposes. If you believe that abortion is murder then regulation of abortion would be a legitimate purpose. The argument for prohibiting gay marriage is a whole lot weaker as the Supreme Court found.

There are two separate areas of concern. The first is if the state can make things like fornication and sodomy illegal, which the state did for most of America's history. Eventually, this 200 year history was reversed and various Supreme Court decisions made fornication, adultery, sodomy and so on legal, including removing a cause for civil action against someone who commits adultery. I would consider this the start of lawlessness.

Flowing from there was state recognition of marriages, which has been something states have been doing for a very long time, because the unit of the family concerns the interests of the state. No state in America recognised same sex marriage at its founding nor did any do so for 200 years, and the very idea would have been held absurd. Yet here we are.

Yes here we are. Astonishingly my marriage hasn't been threatened or affected in the slightest. And neither has anyone else's that I know. Despite all the frantic hyperbole about how allowing gays to get married would destroy the institution of marriage. Curious how that is.

Anabaptists used to understand that morality does not come from the government and its earthly laws. To the contrary.

That is something that David Bentley Hart seems to not understand either.

I think you don’t understand David Bentley Hart or Anabaptism.

[Jazman]

The fundamental construct of America is not that people are free to deliberately murder unborn babies nor to have gay marriages.

Gay marriage wasn’t allowed to nearly all of America’s history. Nor was abortion.

You may be right on gay marriage, but abortion has always been a problem... dig into American history and a lot of 'abortion' of a kind was happening in colonial times up to the present. RvW did not usher in an "abortion". problem in this country. Read more in-depth American history. You'll find your last "Nor was abortion" line to be somewhat inaccurate. I mean Ben Franklin included a 'method' to end an unwanted pregnancy in one of his almanacs... Maybe the success rate wasn't what it is today, but there was still the 'demand' and people trying to do it... way back then in the "good ol days"...
Abortion in Colonial America

So just like then, the mission should be changing hearts & minds and structural/collective incentives to reduce or eliminate the 'demand'.

[Josh]

The fundamental construct of America is not that people are free to deliberately murder unborn babies nor to have gay marriages.

Gay marriage wasn’t allowed to nearly all of America’s history. Nor was abortion.

You may be right on gay marriage, but abortion has always been a problem... dig into American history and a lot of 'abortion' of a kind was happening in colonial times up to the present. RvW did not usher in an "abortion". problem in this country. Read more in-depth American history. You'll find you last "Nor was abortion" to be quite far from the truth.

Jazman, America did not have openly operating abortion clinics offering to kill women’s babies for most of America’s history.

[Moses]

The fundamental construct of America is not that people are free to deliberately murder unborn babies nor to have gay marriages.

Gay marriage wasn’t allowed to nearly all of America’s history. Nor was abortion.

You may be right on gay marriage, but abortion has always been a problem... dig into American history and a lot of 'abortion' of a kind was happening in colonial times up to the present. RvW did not usher in an "abortion". problem in this country. Read more in-depth American history. You'll find your last "Nor was abortion" line to be somewhat inaccurate. I mean Ben Franklin included a 'method' to end an unwanted pregnancy in one of his almanacs... Maybe the success rate wasn't what it is today, but there was still the 'demand' and people trying to do it... way back then in the "good ol days"...
Abortion in Colonial America

So just like then, the mission should be changing hearts & minds and structural/collective incentives to reduce or eliminate the 'demand'.

Certainly our mission should be changing hearts and minds - isn't that what our approach as followers of Christ should be as it relates to all types of sin and violence?

It is intriguing to me how that as it relates to abortion, a certain set of people advocates an approach of relying mostly on social engineering and changed hearts while allowing the violence to remain legal, whereas a different set of people advocates making the violence illegal in addition to changing hearts and minds.
By contrast, many in that first set seem to believe that the best approach to addressing gun violence is extensive legal prohibitions not only against the violence itself but also on so much as owning a tool that could be used to commit violence. And then many in the second set are loud in reminding us that gun violence is a matter of hearts and minds, not legal regulation (although they don't typically suggest that legal prohibitions against gun violence ought to be removed.)

[temporal1]

Violence is the correct word for abortion, no matter method or timng.

[Josh]

It is intriguing to me how that as it relates to abortion, a certain set of people advocates an approach of relying mostly on social engineering and changed hearts while allowing the violence to remain legal, whereas a different set of people advocates making the violence illegal in addition to changing hearts and minds.
By contrast, many in that first set seem to believe that the best approach to addressing gun violence is extensive legal prohibitions not only against the violence itself but also on so much as owning a tool that could be used to commit violence. And then many in the second set are loud in reminding us that gun violence is a matter of hearts and minds, not legal regulation (although they don't typically suggest that legal prohibitions against gun violence ought to be removed.)

To extend your analogy, those of us who are against abortion and think it should be illegal don't think that forceps, bags of saline, hypodermic needles, vaccuum aspirators, OB/GYN clinics, and so on should be restricted or made illegal.

Whereas those who claim to be "opposed gun violence" seem to think that barrels of steel, a half-machined block of metal, a keyring attached to a piece of string, a spring, 3-D printers, a box of filament, and sporting-goods stores need to be restricted or made illegal.

A reasonable interpretation is that acquiring the tools necessary to kill someone (a knife, a sharp implement, a club, a sledgehammer, a gun, etc.) is easy but the act of using it to kill someone is quite wrong. Likewise, it's not hard to make an abortion happen, but doing so is also quite wrong. I would like to see far fewer deaths from people shooting guns at each other and also far fewer deaths from abortions.

[Ken]

It is intriguing to me how that as it relates to abortion, a certain set of people advocates an approach of relying mostly on social engineering and changed hearts while allowing the violence to remain legal, whereas a different set of people advocates making the violence illegal in addition to changing hearts and minds.
By contrast, many in that first set seem to believe that the best approach to addressing gun violence is extensive legal prohibitions not only against the violence itself but also on so much as owning a tool that could be used to commit violence. And then many in the second set are loud in reminding us that gun violence is a matter of hearts and minds, not legal regulation (although they don't typically suggest that legal prohibitions against gun violence ought to be removed.)

To extend your analogy, those of us who are against abortion and think it should be illegal don't think that forceps, bags of saline, hypodermic needles, vaccuum aspirators, OB/GYN clinics, and so on should be restricted or made illegal.

Whereas those who claim to be "opposed gun violence" seem to think that barrels of steel, a half-machined block of metal, a keyring attached to a piece of string, a spring, 3-D printers, a box of filament, and sporting-goods stores need to be restricted or made illegal.

A reasonable interpretation is that acquiring the tools necessary to kill someone (a knife, a sharp implement, a club, a sledgehammer, a gun, etc.) is easy but the act of using it to kill someone is quite wrong. Likewise, it's not hard to make an abortion happen, but doing so is also quite wrong. I would like to see far fewer deaths from people shooting guns at each other and also far fewer deaths from abortions.

Your analogy fails when it comes to medical abortions.

The pro-life movement explicitly wants to prohibit the sale and possession of Mifepristone and Misoprostol. Which is an exact parallel to an assault weapons ban that prohibits the sale and possession of assault weapons (however they are defined).

A more accurate parallel to the existing state of gun laws would be to say that you are free to buy, sell, and own as much Mifepristone and Misoprostol as you want. Without the government intervening or tracking who has it. Everyone can have a supply in their medicine cabinet. But you just aren't allowed to use it for its intended purpose. In other words, Mifepristone and Misoprostol don't cause abortions. People cause abortions.

[Josh]

The pro-life movement explicitly wants to prohibit the sale and possession of Mifepristone and Misoprostol. Which is an exact parallel to an assault weapons ban that prohibits the sale and possession of assault weapons (however they are defined).

Prescription drugs have been controlled for a long time.

A more accurate parallel to the existing state of gun laws would be to say that you are free to buy, sell, and own as much Mifepristone and Misoprostol as you want. Without the government intervening or tracking who has it. Everyone can have a supply in their medicine cabinet. But you just aren't allowed to use it for its intended purpose. In other words, Mifepristone and Misoprostol don't cause abortions. People cause abortions.

It would be more accurate to observe that these drugs have been regulated for a long time. It is illegal to share prescription drugs. It is illegal to stockpile them other than approved entities like a pharmacy or drug company.

One particular reason to do so is to prevent angry boyfriends from sneaking the drugs into a pregnant girlfriend’s food and drink to try to force her to against her will.

Contrary to what you said, guns are indeed regulated, and so are gun parts. Gun stores and gun part manufacturers are regulated and can’t just stockpile parts and distribute them willy nilly. Background checks are required. And the ATF can demand to see records of whom was sold what.

[HondurasKeiser]

Bethel McGrew has a good take on the Pro-Life movement and Trump:

To begin with, there is the high-handed way Trump has gutted the platform of any distinctly social conservative language (not just on abortion but on things like the definition of marriage). Having thus thrown socons under the bus, he has proceeded to back up over them, repeatedly. Democrats will still insist he could be playing 4D pro-life chess this whole time, because that’s how they will get themselves elected. The rest of us are free to state the obvious. He’s willfully misread and praised a SCOTUS ruling as if it enshrined a right to chemical abortion, when the ruling did no such thing. He’s boasted that his administration will be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He’s denigrated so-called “heartbeat bills” which set a cutoff at 6 weeks as “stupid” and “a terrible mistake.” He was still so focused on taking jabs at Ron DeSantis that he recently appeared ignorant of what Florida’s new Amendment 4 even contained (protecting abortion through the duration of the pregnancy), merely repeating vaguely that “6 weeks is too early.” Pro-lifers are now trying hard to find a silver lining in his newly informed announcement that he will vote no on the amendment, because it’s “too extreme.”

Trump, of course, never had any truly pro-life principles to speak of. It’s much sadder to watch the transformation of J. D. Vance, who at one time opposed the “exceptions” (abortion in rape and incest) and employed rhetoric looking towards a hopeful goal of “ending” abortion. His website was selectively scrubbed of this sort of content before eventually redirecting to Trump’s website. He is now parroting Trump on talking points like the support of chemical abortions (which the federal government could still constitutionally regulate under interstate commerce laws, if they actually cared). Whatever distinctive pro-life identity he once had is now gone, completely subsumed. Will he ever get himself back? Who knows?

What this all means is that in effect, American conservatives now face a choice between two Democrat parties: the Democrat party of today, and the Democrat party of the 90s, or even the early noughties (except more enthusiastic about gay marriage). Trump would like to revive the spirit of “safe, legal, and rare,” if not the exact slogan. This is his bid for America’s majority middle: Are you fundamentally ambivalent about abortion? Do you have a vague sense that 6 weeks is “too soon” and birth is “too extreme,” but you don’t have a fully worked-out philosophy of what happens in between or when exactly it becomes not “too soon”—15 weeks, maybe? And if you’re honest, you’d prefer to think about it as little as possible? Hey—him too!

[Josh]

The political reality is that nobody is going to win elections pushing for treating abortion as murder right from the moment of conception. Politicians who try to take such a stand will lose, particularly in national elections.

Pro-life activists would have done well to focus on state and local issues after the repeal of Roe v Wade, instead of harping on national candidates. Instead they did basically nothing, and now places like Ohio, Kansas, and soon Florida have ballot initiatives that enshrine a right to abortion. If pro-life activists want politicians to help them, they need to show a tad more political savvy and also acknowledge how significant repealing Roe v Wade is.

They have a sympathetic SCOTUS and in Ohio a veto proof legislature, senate, governor, and state supreme court. Yet they have utterly failed in their political mission. Griping about Trump seems the wrong place to start; are they somehow going to enact their agenda with a Harris-Walz administration? Yes, but only if one realises their agenda is successful fundraising dinners, letters begging for donations to “save babies”, and no real action for any kind of political change that results in abortionists and mothers who kill their babies being behind bars or meeting the executioner’s sword. What is it they really want, anyway?