Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign stop in Wisconsin.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions, if it becomes illegal.
MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews asked Trump during the town hall-style interview where he stands on abortion.
Pressed to elaborate, Trump said: “I think by, basically, the RNC, the Republican party, the establishment”.
Trump then went on to suggest that America will need to go back to the time when women were forced to have back-alley abortions.
Trump continued: “Well, you go back to a position like they had where people would perhaps go to illegal places but you have to ban it”. Trump did not say what that punishment should be. I have the same stance as Ronald Reagan, I’ve had it from the beginning …
While pro-life advocates yearn for the day when unborn children are protected under law and abortions are banned, the pro-life movement has historically opposed punishing women who have abortions – instead focusing on holding abortion practitioners criminally accountable for the unborn children they kill in abortions.
While this is indeed an all-purpose conservative dodge on hard policy issues, and the immediate effect of an overturning of Roe, Trump won’t get off the hook for saying the states should figure out how to punish women for trying to control their own bodies.
But pro-choice groups have long tried to cast opposition to abortion as a thinly veiled “war on women”, and Mr. Trump’s comments gave them another opening to do so.
For the answer, CNN turned to 2016 candidate-turned-Trump surrogate Dr. Ben Carson, who was quick to defend the GOP frontrunner over what he chalked up as nothing more than a misunderstanding. He walked away from that statement within hours amid bipartisan condemnation, saying if abortion was banned, it would be doctors, not women, facing punishment.
“Looking forward to bringing the party together”, he said. In the CBS interview, he said he “would’ve liked” for abortion to be decided on a state-by-state basis.
Mr Trump’s comments immediately unleashed a torrent of negative reactions, and his campaign emailed a statement to Reuters in which Mr Trump moderated his view.
Donald Trump’s campaign suffered two high profile mistakes over the past week and allowed his closest rival to pounce on a growing lead in Wisconsin’s Republican primary.
Bennett said the Trump campaign could get close to half of the delegates when all is said and done, predicting they’ll have at least more than 10 delegates supportive of the candidate.
But on CNN Thursday morning, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson asserted Trump doesn’t really support a federal abortion ban after all. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was charged with misdemeanour battery in Florida on Tuesday over an altercation with a female reporter earlier this month.
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“Of course women shouldn’t be punished”, Republican presidential hopeful and Ohio Gov. John Kasich told MSNBC.
