a pro-life christian worth reading
The abortion debate in the USA seems ever more polarised. And am I right to think that a big chunk of the vote for Trump came from conservative Christians voting on this one issue?
So, I’m slight relieved to come across a post from from a ‘pro-life’ Christian who actually considers issues in some depth:
Although staunchly pro-life, I am also pro-dialogue, and I am very much pro-woman. I don’t think abortion is an issue that will go away without working together with people from different ideologies and priorities. (Beautiful Kingdom Warriors)
I urge my other Christian blogging buddies to read the whole post, and think very carefully about Trump, abortion, and the future of their nation.
Tom Quiner – please read the post by Beautiful Kingdom Warriors. Remember, Tom, when I saved you the embarrassment of posting a lie that was circulating about Trump? That was just one year ago, when you were campaigning against Trump, before your monomania about abortion made you support a man who shares none of values.
Madblog – please read the post by Beautiful Kingdom Warriors. Other people who share you values were not excluded from the Women’s March.
Becky Miller – please read the post by Beautiful Kingdom Warriors. Other Christians can read the Bible and come to similar but different conclusions.
Thank you to Beautiful Kingdom Warriors for pulling the argument back from the extremes.
Egalitarian bible butchering heretics. The fact that a God hating pagan would find them attractive should worry anybody for whom faithfulness to the one true and living God is the driving force of their life.
For clueless post modern liberals like run this site you link Violet, they will, in diametric opposition to the whole of the biblical witness, take it as an indication that they’re doing the right thing.
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Thanks for your thoughts Tiribulus. Do you think ‘God hating pagans’ like myself can only find bad things attractive? Is your outlook really so black and white? Doesn’t sound much like the Christian story. I want dialogue. I want to understand why abortion has become such a huge issue, and especially from a religion that makes up its opinion on the back of guess work – your god kills lots of babies but is against abortion? It simply doesn’t make sense.
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You are, as was I, the citizen of a spiritual kingdom and the heir of a corrupted nature that precludes you from finding anything attractive that would give credibility to your moral accountability before the Lord your God.
This post is evidence. I give you my word that I intend by this no condescension or insult. Truly.
Were it not for His free and sovereign electing grace, I would probably be your partner here Violet and celebrating crippled castrated American Christendom right along with you.
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I don’t think it’s healthy, useful or even logical to consider everyone who thinks differently from you as ‘evil’ in intent or understanding. Your beliefs are so far removed from the story of Jesus that I am astounded you claim to follow a religion based on his story.
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You don’t have the first flickering clue what Jesus Christ was about Violet. You won’t get much help from sites like the one you linked either. He was not a tie dyed, hippified, groovadelic teacher of mushy squishy love and fuzzy warm feelings. A tolerant, broadminded inclusive therapist who was concerned about “equality” for everybody.
He was and is the second person of the eternal Godhead, prophesied to come to earth, first all the way back in the 3rd chapter of Genesis. Again, my view is the historic one. Theirs is the weird new and innovative one.
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You have your opinion and I have mine. But I would recommend getting to the ‘New Testament’ section of the Bible and focusing on the words of the character Jesus, on which Christianity is generally formed. He talks a lot about caring for others and equality (egalitarianism).
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Like I said Violet. (hat in hand and in calm tone) you do not have the very first flickering clue who Jesus Christ was, or why He was here. None whatsoever. Not even a little That’s not my opinion, it is an unassailable fact.
Make no mistake though. I have far more regard for and patience with you than I do for people like the ones who run the website this post is about.
Interestingly, they will probably say themselves that they have more in common with you than they do with me. That is almost certainly true. They’re clueless too.
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I would agree with you that I don’t have a clue what your interpretation of the life of Jesus Christ is. However, I’m fairly familiar with the story as presented in the New Testament. What other evidence do you have on his life that makes you comfortable to use ‘egalitarian’ as a insult?
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Egalitarian bible butchering heretics
I would have thought being egalitarian as it is generally regarded would be a good thing.
Could you explain exactly what you mean by your quote, please?
a God hating pagan
As far as I am aware, pagans generally don’t necessarily hate specific gods, although they might not worship certain ones.
Do you have evidence that certain pagans actually hated/hate Yahweh?
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Thanks for picking that up. I did wonder why ‘egalitarian’ was being hurled like an insult – egalitarian being the very definition of the character he claims to follow.
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Read THIS Ark. First two long comments please.
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I don’t know exactly what I am supposed to be reading? Your blog is a confusing theological mishmash and the linked comments do NOT address my question regarding
a) egalitarian bible butchering heretics.
Can you please answer the question without obliging me to read through long drawn out massive tomes?
Thanks.
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Gender egalitarianism denies the driving in thesis of those first two comments Ark.
It is a direct attack on the created order of God and utterly unheard of until the last few decades of the 20th century apostate American church.
It pretty much a guarantee that anything (morally speaking) the homies on this site can tolerate, will not be in accordance with the actual word of God.
Again, I hasten to clarify that left to myself, that is me as well. I am no position to look down on anybody.
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Oh how I hate typos, but I’m in a hurry. Have mercy please.
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It is a direct attack on the created order of God >/em>
Fair enough, Greg. Now demonstrate the veracity of your statement, in a civil, non-dogmatic manner and we could have an interesting and worthwhile discussion,
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As soon as you demonstrate how and why 1+1=2 Ark .
And around we go again. I cannot “prove” to you on the basis of your own sinful self exalting logic that the Bible, alone and in it’s entirety is the written mind of the one true and living almighty God.
Due to the new nature I’ve been given in Christ (as a passive recipient), that’s what that new man born of the Spirit of this God does.He believes the source of his life is the source of his life.He can’t help it.
While still dead in Adam Ark you will believe literally anything in order to avoid believing the truth about yourself and your moral culpability before your spotlessly holy creator.
Anything.
You can’t help it either and just like me, left to yourself, you never will.
I say again. Christianity is not the intellectual acquiescence to a sufficiently persuasive package of propositions. It is a supernatural resurrection from death in the first man Adam to life in the risen Christ.
You can tell when this has happened to somebody by their attitude toward and relationship with God and His Christ as He reveals Himself in the ancient Christian scriptures. Those who are His will believe His word no matter who or what it costs them.
Those that are not will find new and innovative teachings there that nobody has found since the beginning of time and act like those who stand where Christ’s church has always stood for many centuries are the ones with the problem.
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In other words, you are indoctrinated and have pretty much lost all power of critical thought – got it.
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If you ask Americans real opinions they generally want abortion restricted but not illegal. The polarization is due to it being treated by the supreme court as a constitutional issue, which it is not.
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What happens when you restrict access to abortion dp? Just so I’m clear there’s logic in this.
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Some people don’t get abortions, others find ways around the law, some mothers who would have aborted turn out quite happy with their babies, others unhappy, life goes on.
I have no idea if that is what people are thinking when they say they favor restrictions on abortion, I’m just reporting what they say in polls.
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Is that your idea of success on the issue? It’s banned – some women have kids who would have had an abortion and don’t regret it being the only positive outcome? Would it not be more logical to pursue this objective by offering women on low incomes more family support mechanisms? Then the dangerous illegal operations wouldn’t have a market, saving lives, and women and kids who have miserable and difficult lives as the result of forced birthing could plan to have kids at a time they can truly support them. In a way, not letting people plan for families, kills the children of stable families in the future. Check out some studies on it.
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If you recall, my position is that not all wicked deeds need to be illegal, it is a prudential decision. Most people who call themselves ‘pro-life’ recognize, I think, that the underlying problem is a highly materialistic culture that isolates individuals from one another, imagines sex can be divorced from responsibility, and values money over humanity. That does not make American abortion laws (or rather lack thereof) any less obscene, but those laws would not exist without an underlying cultural sickness.
American women of low income are generally already on some form of welfare so I doubt lack of government money is the driver of abortion rates. The decision is more likely driven by feelings of fear and isolation, often combined with emotional extortion from family and boyfriends.
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So what would be your ideal situation? As a supporter of the anti-abortion viewpoint, what do you hope to see?
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I don’t hope for anything, I’m a conservative.
I would not be surprised if RvW were overturned and it became a state issue, with some states banning it with exceptions and others leaving it in its current wild-west unregulated state. That is the constitutionally correct thing to do, and in a sense it would be a return to the norm. You are not American so you won’t understand why that is important, but the U.S. argument over abortion is also an argument about whether the supreme court is supposed to apply the law (conservative=rule by custom) or just make shit up as they go along (progressive=rule by self-proclaimed experts). As a legal interpretation RvW is absurdly bad and the nation is still choking on it.
But the underlying attitudes that create the demand for abortion – radical individualism, hatred of nature and its limits, love of money, etc – are not going anywhere, so I would not be surprised if the forces of evil keep doubling down. It isn’t enough to have abortion “safe rare and legal”, they need to force religious hospitals to preform them, or take away conscience clauses for medical staff to opt out of assisting, or make taxpayers pay for them, or preform ghoulish experiments on fetuses. There is a desire to force everyone to either participate in evil or be marginalized and there is no reason why those people can’t win.
If there is hope of creating a pro-life nation it has little to do with politics and everything to do with believers creating thick communities that reject materialism, live the gospel, and are prepared to be marginalized. Then in a few centuries… who knows.
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If the event claims to be A WOMEN’S MARCH, and some women are officially excluded, there can be no rational reason to believe that the march is really about being women.
It is therefore about something else. In other words, your female status is not the qualifying item; something else is. Pro-choice men’s groups would have been acceptable, for instance.
The March officially excluded all pro-life participation, a move I found hypocritical. I don’t know what you heard from across the water, but over here, at least pre-march, there was no possible way to avoid grasping the almost totally Planned Parenthood-centric nature of it.
Hypocritical? A march about female solidarity, tolerance and inclusiveness excluding women whose perspective differs on a fundamentally female issue.
No one could enforce that exclusive policy in real time. So I know that there were pro-life women there, and I read about some pro-life groups who came anyway, though I don’t know about numbers. And it sounds as though there was mostly a spirit of camaraderie once people were there. So we were not literally or physically excluded, and people were generally nice. Hooray.
It was a giant free promotion for a bloated corporate interest. I smh at women sometimes.
“Although staunchly pro-life, I am also pro-dialogue, and I am very much pro-woman.”
So am I. There’s no “although” for me; pro-life means pro-woman.
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No Madlog, the march was about a sexual predator who wants to punish women… a sexual predator who believes this
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No. Pro-life means you have no respect for an adult free citizen to make their own decisions regarding their lives. You feel these free adults should have to bow down to *your* “superior” vision of the world because you’re so magnificently enlightened, they answer to you.
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What did you think of the post I linked to? She certainly saw something different in it.
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Light or dark.
Genocide or justice.
Life or death.
Good or evil.
There can be no dialog between polar opposites because they share no common ground.
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Yes, no dialogue, just like Jesus told you in the Bible. Have you read the whole Bible? Or just the start?
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Violet,
I am citing simple common sense.
But I also studied a university course in effective argumentation and the professor said the same thing:
There has to be some sort of common ground or rational dialog is impossible.
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Rat,
What part of the dialog are you hallucinating that I am taking part in?
Me saying that dialog is impossible is not me taking part in any dialog.
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Oh well, maybe I read too much into your comment Silenceofmind, but it seemed to me as if you were trying to convey a poorly formulated thought, that you do not approve of the view presented by Beatiful Kingdom Warriors, any more than the view presented by our host Violetwisp, since you have an extremely black and white regard on the world. Perhaps it was too much of me to expect from you to try to express this much?
However, you replying to this post, even if only to express that you do not approve of it and/or that you do not think there could be a dialogue, is actually a part of an ongoing larger dialogue. Is it not? Not to mention you replying back to me, even if it was only to explain how I have misunderstood you. We are in effect now having a dialogue dispite the rather obvious polar opposites we do represent and have been presenting for quite a while here and indeed we have had a good number of dialogues, you and I, on this very same media on a number of issues, we have been set as polar opposites to each other. I would like to even claim, that we may have better learned to understand, if not accept, each others views. I know I have. Have you not?
Personally, I would say that your professor was a bit mistaken, or that you may have misunderstood what she/he expressed, by oversimplyfying the issue. Of course there can be a dialogue even between polar opposites, even when the common ground is minimal or nonexistant. Besides we have plenty of common ground as do the opposite views on this issue of abortion and sex education. All of us having this discussion are humans with human experiences, human needs, human urges and human cultural heritage though all of these are different and individual, they are no less human. And as far as I can tell we are even discussing this in the same language. Wether this sort of dialogue is likely to lead to any consensus is a completely a nother issue. Yet, since it is not totally impossible, as history proves, it is important to keep up the dialogue, so that we not only understand each other, but that we would better understand our own position and even change it, if that is where new information provided by our opponent leads us through logic. Even if you do not appriciate this dialogue, I do. I really hope you would learn to appriciate it too.
However, I do not appriceate you to refer to me as a “rat”. It is undignified and embarrasing to you and does not give an impression of you as an adult, or even someone able to discuss much anything at all. So, drop it and defend your position logically and rationally or by appeals to emotion, if you so please. Or if you do not appriciate a dialogue, then be silent. Your disagreeing with the possibility of a dialogue has been duly noted, but at this point it looks much more like you demand that only in order to give yourself an excuse to evade from providing logical argumentation in support of your position and that impression is stronger because you have sank to the level of name calling. Is it not?
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Rautakyy,
No problemo.
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“There can be no dialog…” And yet here you are providing your part for the dialog. Can you see the contradiction?
Personally I hope you contribute to the dialog between “polar opposites” as I have learned to appriciate your input, at least in the sense that you provide me with perception what the “polar opposite” is to my view. This may broaden my perspective, wich is something I on my part really appriciate.
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Thank you for the recommendation. This issue is polarised. The focus is on legal restrictions on abortion, defined as from the moment of conception. Though there are many Christians on the pro-choice side- consider Unfundamentalist Christians.
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Thanks, never heard of them, looks interesting. I did a post a while ago saying I might respect a Christian who was concerned about abortion but took both a caring and practical approach to it. I think the post linked to does both, and it seems to be rare in the pro-life camp. The further polarised both sides become, the more disgusted they are with each and the further they bury into their corners. Everyone needs to come out and explore common ground based on facts.
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A blogging buddy who became a facebook friend, from a Republican Evangelical background now Democrat, liberal-evangelical (!) said whenever she debated political issues across the divide, the other would bring up abortion and shut down debate. Democrats support abortion so are monsters. QED. Vote Republican, whoever is the candidate, whatever their other positions are. It is a bizarre kind of groupthink. Abortion is Murder, the only issue worth talking of, and banning is the only way to prevent it.
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That’s what scares me, how can political loyalty be based on one subject, when in any case banning it has never prevented it? I’m sure there’s more to it. So many people can’t be quite so illogical.
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Thank you for sharing my post with your readers!
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Thanks for posting and providing useful food for thought for both sides!
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Abortion won’t end until women – en masse – reject abortion. But, that does not change the fact that abortion kills a child each and every time.
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Thanks for your comment. So what would you like to see happen as a result of the pro-life campaign? Would you like to force all women to continue with all pregnancies and give birth? It does seem unlikely that women will reject abortion, given that it’s been common in all societies throughout time, regardless of the legality.
Are you happy at the thought of rich women flying out of the country to get abortions somewhere they can pay for it, while poor families grow beyond their ability to support them or mothers risk their lives to end pregnancies in unsafe conditions? That’s what happens in all other countries where it’s illegal.
Do you think, in the end, it might be more sensible to fight your opinion that pregnant women shouldn’t have abortions, and try to convince them with reasoned argument to make different choices, rather than fight to make abortion illegal and face the situation outlined above?
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It is not just women. When a girl/woman gets pregnant, she is pressured by the father, her parents, her employer, her school to end the pregnancy. Even true in conservative cultures because of the honor/shame dynamic. Also to blame for unwanted pregnancies is rape culture/purity culture that objectifies women and sexualizes little girls. Boys begin looking at porn at 10 years old on average, and porn is used more in conservative cultures. I believe the advancement of women’s equality and the end of patriarchy will lead to fewer abortions.
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Abortion is a symptom of unGodly culture, whether that be on the liberal or conservative end of the spectrum. Making a law isn’t going to change a culture. Education, dialogue, etc. is the path to change.
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I agree with Ruth Perry in that abortion is a symptom. As I am unable to see anything “Godly” at all in the world, nor do I know of any method, that could provide any reliable information of the alledged (but so often mutually contrasting and even mutually exclusive claims) of “Godly” and as such I am compelled to think such suggestions of super- or otherwise unnatural causes and effects are imaginary superstition, to me abortion presents itself more as a symptom of social problems and behaviour models. So, that is also where we disagree. And yet, I would hope we could be able to agree, that wether anything unnatural (like gods) exists or not, we have to approach the question from the angle we are uniformally able to address and evaluate, such as the fact, that abortion in itself is a result of behaviourial causes within any given society. From that agreement I would hope we could also agree on how the society should treat the women who end up to make this difficult descision.
Having read her post, I do hope we could agree on some sane methods of social culture to prevent possible parents from getting into such a situation where they are faced with the hard descision and that parenthood should be supported by the society in general. It sure seems, that we already agree on the most important issue, wich is, that nobody should end up in this situation because they did not know any better, when they engaged in sex.
In my view, rights of an individual define wether abortion is wrong as such, or not. The ethical rights of one individual only extend as far as they do not override the rights of a nother individual. That is why we do not force organ donations, even though we could save a lot of actual existing people with – for example kidney failure – by forcing healthy citizens to donate their spare kidneys. In a very similar way a woman can not be forced to provide their wombs for the fetus even if the fetus could be considered a full flegded citizen, or even an actual human individual.
In most cases of terminated pregnancy – that is abortion – there is nothing that could possibly be identified as an individual human being to be “killed”. There is no method to define a single magical, or otherwise unnatural moment in time when a new human being appears. We have to bear in mind, that the term abortion refers to the abortion of pregnancy – wich is a process in wich a human being is only developing from a tiny zygote to a newborn baby. By far most abortions are conducted in the very early days of this process.
I am not trying to deny the emotional distress such a choise is to the woman in whose body the process is happening. That is an ethical problem and it is actual harm to the individual, but then there is the responsibility of the individual also to be considered. Responsibility does not rule out social support. Yet, that is the stage where the individual has to take responsibility of their own life and possibly that of a nother yet to appear by making the choise. Some very vendictive individuals would have us as a society to condemn the woman to have the child as some sort of punishment for promisquity or just for having sex – that is enjoying themselves. As enjoyment seems to be somehow sinfull. Maybe I should not comment on that, because I simply do not understand this view of right and wrong. But for sure, if the baby is a punishment to the mother, then the mother shall be a punishment on the baby, who as the pro-life people so often point out, is innocent, at least to the act of sex their parents had.
I hope we can develope the society into a direction where any individual can take responsibility of their lives long before such a situation, as where they have to make the descision, about an abortion, but to me it seems that what the pro-life people are trying to do, responsibility wise, is to pinn a sort of revenge for having had sex exclusively on the women. Perhaps, it is because they have vendictive, superstitious and taboo concepts of both sexuality, and of justice, that they in general are unable to recognize the real life solutions to ethical dilemmas.
It is refreshing to see, that not all of them are totally blind to the actual facts of life, like that proper sexual education is by far better means to reduce the social symptom of abortions, than simply putting arbitrary bans on them. One would expect, that even the most conservative people could recognize a method that actually works from a method that does not.
Nice to hear about you Violetwisp.
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While I thoroughly disagree with your take as to what is the ”symptom”, (ungodliness) it is interesting to note that in many highly conservative environments – the type of environment one would often associate with ”God’ fearin’ Christian’s” – the pressure to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is high. And yet, even though a ”sin” (sic) has been committed one might expect the woman would,be encouraged to carry to term.
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See what you think of THIS folks.
The principle there is actually related to this topic.
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Pingback: the common ground on polarised abortion viewpoints | violetwisp
“The abortion debate in the USA seems ever more polarized. And am I right to think that a big chunk of the vote for Trump came from conservative Christians voting on this one issue?”
I don’t think so. Conservative Christians, will more often than not, vote Republican. I had several conversations with multiple people who voted for Trump who were GLAD that abortion wasn’t a big part of the election. One thing that I have seen, at least among my conservative friends, is that we are all pretty sick and tired of the cultural war stuff.
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I know some who did. I also know some who hated Clinton primarily due to abortion and therefore voted Trump as the ‘lesser’ of two evils, and specifically for the Supreme Court nomination hope. That’s interesting to hear where you are it’s not the case.
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