 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stirred up controversy when he said there should be "some sort of punishment" for women who have abortions. … He wasn’t very conservative [passing the law as governor], but he was a pretty conservative president.” 
 
 — Donald Trump, CNN town hall, March 29, 2016 
 
 There is growing attention on Donald Trump’s rhetoric on gender and women, which his critics view as misogynistic or often reduced to superficial comments about appearances (recent example: Trump’s comments about Ted Cruz’s wife). He said he would not, and that he is “pro-choice in every respect.” (Note: This shows he was indeed asked the question, despite his statement to CNN that “as a businessman I’m not sure I was ever even asked the question.”) 
 
 “I’m very pro-choice,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I hate the concept of abortion. Polls consistently show that between 55 and 65 percent of Americans say that Roe should not be overturned, while only around 30 percent say it should. “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the statement. Are you going to send them to jail?” 
 
 After Matthews tried to draw him out on what should happen if abortions are outlawed, Trump responded, “There has to be some form of punishment.” 
 
 Bipartisan criticism was immediate, with Hillary Clinton calling the comment “horrific and telling” and Republican rival John Kasich strongly disputing Trump's assertion: “Absolutely not.” 
 
 The Trump campaign went into damage control mode, emailing out a clarifying statement. You could also argue that rape and incest exceptions reinforce the idea that abortion access ought to be granted through some kind of puritanical virtue test — a woman who was raped didn’t willfully have sex, so therefore she isn’t a dirty sinner and she can get an abortion. “On the important issue of the sanctity of life, what’s far too often neglected is that being pro-life is not simply about the unborn child; it’s also about the mother — and creating a culture that respects her and embraces life. “It’s the only major thing that he ever did as governor or president, that I’m aware of or that I can recall, that he ever said he did the wrong thing,” Cannon recalled to The Fact Checker. Reagan’s view of allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest or life of the mother is actually consistent with what many people with “pro-life” views believe.  Donald Trump yanked the Republican Party toward a contested convention over the past 24 hours as he let rip an extraordinary series of statements on abortion, the Geneva Conventions, violence against women and his own commitment to supporting the GOP presidential nominee that seemed to obliterate the notion that the party will unite behind him anytime soon.
– Donald Trump entered the national abortion debate on Wednesday as smoothly as a burning oil tanker slamming into a fireworks warehouse. After causing an outcry by saying that if abortions are banned, women who have them should be punished, he went on to claim the issue was "unclear" before issuing a statement saying that doctors, not women who have abortions, would be the ones to be punished if abortion was outlawed. "My position has not changed—like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions," he insisted. A roundup of reactions: The statements came amid what Politico calls "24 hours of mayhem" for Trump that also included scrapping his GOP loyalty pledge, a fresh line of attack in the Corey Lewandowski case, and complaining about the Geneva Conventions. Politico predicts that with the party now hopelessly divided, a contested GOP convention is almost inevitable. Ben Carson offered a very Carsonesque defense of Trump in a CNN interview. "I don't think he really had a chance to really think about it," Carson said, adding that Trump was able to "come up with a more rational and informed type of answer" after talking to advisers. Carson said he agreed with Trump's latter position that abortion providers, not women, should be the ones to be punished if the US ever bans abortion. Ted Cruz didn't pass up the opportunity to slam Trump, the Hill reports. Trump "has demonstrated that he hasn't seriously thought through the issues, and he'll say anything just to get attention," Cruz said in a statement. "We shouldn't be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world," added Cruz, who, unlike Trump, does not support exceptions for rape and incest under an abortion ban, according to the Washington Post. Some anti-abortion activists are just as outraged as pro-choice groups by Trump's earlier comments, the New York Times reports. They say the call to punish women shows that Trump's shift toward being anti-abortion is very recent—and insincere. "No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion," says the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund. "We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment." The Washington Post fact-checks Trump's claim that his change of position mirrors Reagan's, finding that this time, Trump is not "glaringly incorrect," although the comparison is a "gratuitous one that lacks historical context, and not analogous to his own evolution." The Post gives him two Pinocchios on a scale that goes to four.