‘There needs to be some form of punishment’: We cannot forget what Trump has said about abortion

The Inquirer has highlighted the role abortion rights are expected to play this November here in battleground Pennsylvania.

Could it influence the votes in the Philly suburbs where it rivals the economy and border policy as top concerns?

» READ MORE: Do suburban women like Donald Trump? | Letters to the Editor

And what do we make of Donald Trump’s position?

“There needs to be some form of punishment.”

That’s what Trump said at an MSNBC town hall I hosted in Green Bay, held just before the 2016 Wisconsin primary.

He wasn’t talking about the doctor involved, but the person undergoing the procedure.

He was talking about the woman herself facing “punishment.”

Hours afterward, Trump’s campaign people tried cleaning up the mess. But the question to Trump was asked clearly, and his answer unequivocal. You can google. It was about the principle of who should face this legal “punishment.”

The question was: “Do you believe in punishment for abortion — as a principle?”

His answer was: “The answer is there needs to be some form of punishment.”

“For the woman?”

“Yeah, there needs to be some form.”

All of this remains on the recording of that town hall interview, plainly available to the concerned voter.

Now I realize it seemed an odd question to ask of someone seeking the American presidency. Those opposing abortion have often called for legal action against those who perform abortion, but never on the person having the procedure herself.

The reason I asked it is because Trump had portrayed himself as “pro-choice” or “pro-life” without any apparent awareness of how it would be treated under the law.

Before seeking public office as a Republican, Trump described himself as a defender of abortion rights.

“I am very pro-choice,” he said on Meet the Press in 1999. He cited his growing up in New York as a background. He said it was “a little bit because we have a very different attitude than in different parts of the country.”

“But I am very pro-choice.”

He said that included what was called “partial-birth” abortion. “No, I am very pro-choice in every respect as far as it goes.”

But when Trump began considering a presidential run as a Republican — this was in 2011 — he told the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I am pro-life.”

Watching Trump switch from ardently “pro-choice” to “pro-life” in such a radical transformation, I got the sense that he’d given little real thought to the issue.

To be blunt, I didn’t imagine he’d given it much thinking, merely switching his position from “pro-choice” to “pro-life” as casually as he was adjusting his watch to daylight saving time.

So I asked if, being politically “pro-life” under the law, what should the legal sanction be for someone facing the procedure?

Did he think the government should exact a criminal punishment on the woman having an abortion? What was his position on the matter?

What he said that Wisconsin afternoon was that there “needs to be some form of punishment.”

When he shifted the U.S. Supreme Court to end Roe v. Wade by adding three new “pro-life” justices, was that his intent, to punish the women?

Trump clearly had no idea what he was talking about. He had no idea that those who take the “pro-life” position rarely want the woman herself to face punishment.

Even since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Trump has taken big-time credit for killing Roe v. Wade. It was he, Donald Trump, who had named those three new justices who made it happen.

And he now takes credit for not just ending Roe, but throwing the decision over abortion rights back to the states.

» READ MORE: A Trump win would usher in an American theocracy centered on destroying reproductive rights | Editorial

That seems to be where Trump has landed, or has found himself landed.

Fourteen states have since passed near-total bans on abortion. Four others — Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Iowa — have bans within six weeks. That is before most women know they are pregnant.

It seems U.S. law now gives reality to Trump’s 2016 decree that there “needs to be some form of punishment.”

Chris Matthews was the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” and before that a presidential speechwriter.