According to a report from Bloomberg, Donald Trump said in the taping of an MSNBC town hall today that abortion should be outlawed and that there “has to be some form of punishment” for women who obtain the procedure. He admitted that in the absence of legal abortion, those women would be driven to “illegal places”:
At a taping of an MSNBC town hall to be aired later, host Chris Matthews pressed Trump on his anti-abortion position, repeatedly asking him, “Should abortion be punished? This is not something you can dodge.”
“Look, people in certain parts of the Republican Party, conservative Republicans, would say, ‘Yes, it should,’” Trump answered.
“How about you?” Matthews asked.
“I would say it’s a very serious problem and it’s a problem we have to decide on. Are you going to send them to jail?” Trump said.
“I’m asking you,” Matthews said.
“I am pro-life,” Trump said. Asked how a ban would actually work, Trump said, “Well, you go back to a position like they had where they would perhaps go to illegal places but we have to ban it,” Trump said.
Matthews then pressed Trump on whether he believes there should be punishment for abortion if it were illegal
“There has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said. “For the woman?” Matthews asked. “Yeah,” Trump said, nodding.
Trump said the punishment would “have to be determined.”
Trump then reportedly linked the issue to the vacancy on the Supreme Court, which Republican senators are trying to keep open in the hopes that a Republican president — possibly Trump — would nominate the next justice.
“They’ve set the law and frankly the judges, you’re going to have a very big election coming up for that reason because you have judges where it’s a real tipping point and with the loss of Scalia, who was a very strong conservative, this presidential election is going to be very important,” Trump said.
“When you say what’s the law, nobody knows what the law is going to be. It depends on who gets elected,” Trump said.
So, does Trump want a Supreme Court justice who would not only help to overturn Roe v. Wade but who would support legal punishment for women who are driven to obtain illegal abortions?
