Donald Trump said Wednesday that "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who have abortions. He walked that statement back dramatically just hours later, but not before causing a huge media firestorm.
Trump was talking to MSNBC's Chris Matthews for a pretaped town hall in Wisconsin to be aired Wednesday night, according to Bloomberg, which posted excerpts of the interview. MSNBC's Irin Carmon also tweeted more complete rough transcript excerpts.
Matthews repeatedly pressed Trump on his anti-abortion views and asked if women should be criminally punished if abortion were outlawed in the US.
Trump hedged at first: "Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party, and conservative Republicans, would say, ‘Yes, it should be punished.'"
"How do you ban abortion?" Matthews asked. "How do you actually do it?"
"You'll go back to a position like they had, where people perhaps will go to illegal places," Trump said. "But we have to ban it."
