Donald Trump reversed his position Wednesday on what should happen to women who seek abortions if they were outlawed in the U.S., first claiming women should face “some form of punishment” and later framing them as “victims” of doctors performing an “illegal act.”
“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 an emailed statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed—like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.”
The GOP frontrunner ignited a firestorm of controversy for claiming during an MSNBC town hall, set to air in full on Wednesday night, that women should be punished for seeking to terminate their pregnancies if abortions were outlawed.
Shortly after a preview of those comments aired, Trump’s campaign issued a brief statement calling the abortion issue “unclear” and saying it “should be put back into the states for determination.” Trump later issued the formal statement saying abortion providers should be held responsible for the procedure, not women.
Both pro- and anti-choice groups were quick to condemn Trump’s initial remark for singling out women for punishment.
… punish the provider… punish the providee…
What’s the diff…?..
Great…NOW women will all jump on board…
It is a gross violation of privacy to get between a woman and her doctor. It’s that simple.
Here’s the problem for Trump (and anti-abortion folks in general) – the procedure they object to is not done to the woman, but to the fetus. They don’t object to women having uterine scraping procedures for endometriosis, or even hysterectomies, or open heart surgery. They object to the ending of the pregnancy.
If the doctor is performing the abortion on the woman, then it’s her choice to get the medical procedure. That is what Trump is claiming now, that the person who sought out the procedure and paid to have it done is the victim of the abortion and not the fetus. The only way to justify that is if the fetus is not a person capable of being harmed.
And if that’s the case, why be anti-abortion?
So either the fetus is a life and abortion is murder and the woman sought and paid for murder, or the fetus is not a life and the woman is blameless so abortion is just a medical procedure.
Pick one, you can’t have both.
Once again, the Donald demonstrates his delusional and woefully uniformed understanding of the world in general, and in this case, of women’s health and reproductive rights in particular. Aside from every other reason to ensure that he never becomes President, he is clearly incompetent for any position of public trust. In short, Trump is a loooooooser!