He was not asking him as a hypothetical if it was already illegal, Trump very clearly stated earlier that he thought it should be illegal and that women should be punished for getting an abortion.
Okay, I can see how that follows. It's really hard to decipher because like a lot of Trump's exchanges it's part of a really long, vague, confusing and rambling mess. The part about it being a response to a hypothetical was how the campaign clarified it later, whether or not that's what he actually meant at the time I really couldn't say.
Trump is actually pretty impressive in how blatant and cavalier he is in his flip-flopping. Not just in his abortion stance, which you could sort of say happened over years, but over a bunch of stuff during the actual election cycle. Like how he throws all of these insults at people when they're his opponents then says they're actually good folks when they drop out or endorse him. And he says straight up it's just politics and not a big deal. So brazen. I wonder how many people actually respect him more because of this insanity.
I personally agree with you. I find the pro-life argument to be almost entirely illogical, but particularly I agree the idea where someone thinks abortion is murder but only wants to penalize the doctor is ridiculous. If it's murder then why not punish both parties? I mean she is basically paying the doctor like a hit man. (in the eyes of a pro-life person) Political expediency is the only thing that explains it.
Well, in this case (yeah, I know) I actually think the misogyny angle holds some weight. Anti-abortion stances are really old and the "don't punish the woman" line appears to also be very old. It was probably easy to believe that the women were always victims of being tricked or pressured into getting the abortions. That and they don't want to hurt women because they "went through enough" by losing the child - not understanding at all that the women generally wouldn't have seen it that way in the first place.
Another strange argument is that the pro-life movement was always heralded for women, making it pro-women and apparently that's supposed to mean that women shouldn't be punished. Like so:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/charles-camosy-real-pro-lifers-don-punish-women-article-1.2583258
Of course anyone who is really pro-woman wouldn't want them to get infantilizing special treatment. That article also tries to argue that abortion is a product of male privilege, which is just... yeah.
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