Then, one level deeper, the reason a politician suspects that talking about making abortion illegal would lead to votes is (A) many voters regard abortion as murder of a human life, (B) an appeal to the strong moral objections to murder, (C) an appeal to the desire for traditional family values that cherishes children and, thus, finds abortion repugnant murder, (D) etc.
So, with (A)-(D), can hope to get some voters up on their hind legs, get votes, win, take office, have power.
IMHO, that's the usual explanation.
Again, my point here is not about pro/con on abortion but just on the process and politics: In particular, with my understanding of the US legal system, talking about making abortion illegal is talking about something that has slim to no chance of happening, divisive, a distraction from issues where something might be done, a spit to windward, etc.
A conspiracy explanation would be that the US Republicans have a list of favorite issues, heavily to make the rich richer, don't want to talk about those issues in public in political campaigns, so come up with issues, e.g., abortion, that will serve as misdirections to permit winning elections without talking about or addressing in public in campaigns the real issues they have in mind. For more, the explanation goes that wealthy backers of the Republicans, e.g., the Koch brothers, with their money for political campaign contributions, are setting the real agenda of the Republican party and pulling strings of the candidates as if they were all puppets.
For me, I don't know how real that explanation is: E.g., I know next to nothing about the Koch brothers or other candidate string pullers. And I don't know the extent to which politicians have strings to be pulled.
Money, Koch brothers, strings, puppets, all aside, again, just from the process, I see slim to no chances of making abortion illegal within 100 years so am irritated that our political process and the OP are still talking about abortion as if there might be some change in the law. So, I find the OP not very real and, thus, find some irony in the OP talking about Trump as not very real.
Then, is Trump real? Tough for me to know: His poll numbers are, for whatever they say that is real, look real. His main slogan about "great again" is not very, say, solid as in, say, a legal document, a research paper in physical science or mathematics, an engineering document for, say, a long bridge, a detailed business plan, etc., but, then, for whatever reasons, US politics doesn't have a lot of documents nearly that solid.
So, if must evaluate a politician, and if vote then do have to do that, then have to go on evidence less solid than would want. Or, maybe pay attention to the least un-solid evidence can get.
It looks like politics is not very competitive, that is, doesn't offer very solid products, so that in comparison, if the auto industry were that uncompetitive, then the average distance a new car could travel without falling apart would be about 10 miles -- on a good day!
I don't want to evaluate Trump or any particular politician here. Instead, again, my point was to question how real the OP was; at the place I indicated, I found the OP to be not real enough and soon quit reading. So, I was shooting at the OP. So, I'm not really discussing politics or even abortion but just editorial writing.
