Throughout American history, abortion was regulated by the states, and it was not the province of the federal government until the Supreme Court announced its Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade decision, which preempted state abortion laws.

Because pro-abortion forces focused on the federal courts, leading to the high court, rather than through the state legislatures or Congress, the best way to judge a president's pro-life record is to examine their Supreme Court appointees and how they dealt with abortion rights.

For this piece, the focus is on Republican presidents, which puts Trump in context with other GOP chief executives. //

Beginning in 1969 and ending in 2020, Republican presidents have put 15 justices on the Supreme Court. Eight have been pro-abortion, and seven have been pro-life—three of them put on the high court by Trump.

In the same time frame, Republican presidents have nominated all three chief justices, Warren E. Burger, William H. Rehnquist, and John G. Roberts Jr.—both Burger and Roberts were pro-abortion. //

After Griswold, conservative legal scholars and jurists recognized that if they accepted the concept of unenumerated constitutional rights, the Constitution would be dethroned, and liberals on the high court would have a blank check to do whatever they wanted.

The response to the advocates for unenumerated rights was the strict constructionist movement, which was committed to the text as it was written and understood as it was written. //

The action is now in the states after 50 years in Washington, generally, at the Supreme Court, specifically.

Some people in the pro-life movement sound like Cold War veterans complaining that the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union fell, but the fact remains that Roe and Casey are gone — and Trump made it happen.

For all the recent triumphalism of the pro-abortion movement, none of them like what Trump did to them — and for the unborn.