You can be pro life and still see that those policies are needlessly cruel.

Not reallly, the whole notion of anti-abortion politics is that the rights of pregnant people are secondary to the rights of fetuses. It's cruel by definition.

There’s a big gap you can fall into while being pro life between forcing women to carry dead fetuses until they become horribly sick and suggesting that healthy fetuses be carried but maybe given up for adoption.

Both ends of that "gap" involve an eliminaton of the right to bodily autonomy for anyone that is or might become pregnant.

Honestly his response there sounds like he’s not one of those insane people.

It sounds like he wants to distance himself from the slow-rolling clusterf&%k that is the state of abortion rights in this country without distancing himself from his anti-Christian belief that life begins at conception. The Bible itself has a recipe for herbal abortifacients, prescribes their use for cases of infidelity, and suggests no less than three times that life begins at first breath.