Donald Trump has been at the center of many controversies since he announced he would be running
for president, probably because he is a controversial character who says controversial things. He doesn’t care what he says or how he says it, and a lot of the time he doesn’t even know what he’s saying. There is no question that he has given every news network– especially late-night television shows and sketch comedies– plenty of material recently, and if he becomes president, which suddenly doesn’t seem too far out of the realm of possibility, don’t expect the controversial statements to stop any time soon.

One of the most recent Trump controversies is centered around the oft-debated topic of abortion. As if this topic wasn’t controversial enough, Trump added some more fuel to the fire by saying that women who seek abortions should be subject to “some form of punishment” if the procedure is banned in the United States. These comments not only infuriated most people, but they further elevated Republican concerns that his explosive remarks about women could doom the party in the fall. As if symbolic of Trump’s entire political quiddity, he tried to walk back on his comments after he realized he had unleashed a frenzy of bipartisan criticism (from Democrats and pro-choicers, but more importantly, from Republicans and pro-lifers) and he changed his stance three times in three hours, ending with this mainstream pro-life statement: “The doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.”

Nicholas Kristof, author for the New York Times, was one of many who rushed to the keyboard after being handed some more first-rate Trump material. Kristof, in an Op-Ed article, makes the simple observation that Trump doesn’t seem to have thought much about the issue, as usual, and then delves deeper into the danger of turning the attention from the fetus to the woman, saying that the moment the focus shifts to criminalizing women, sympathy shifts as well. He cites his past research in this arena as basis for his claim, specifically when he went to Portugal to cover an effort by the Portuguese government to penalize women for having an abortion– an approach he says has tried and failed before. After 48 women in Portugal and their “accomplices” were arrested and humiliated on trial, he says many Portuguese people revolted and turned in favor of abortion rights, as they were “aghast at the idea of prosecuting young women for making wrenching personal choices.” This is the basis for his claim that whatever your stance on abortion, criminalizing it would be worse.

Even those who are anti-abortion were appalled at Donald’s pronouncement. However, looking at the comments from the eyes of someone who is pro-life, Trump has made a completely logical statement if one is adhering to the logic of the pro-life view. As Kristof says, Trump’s comments about punishing women are worth pondering because they reflect the logical conclusion of equating a fetus with any other human being. If abortion truly is murder, as pro-lifers argue, then all the accomplices– the woman, the driver, and the receptionist at the clinic– are as guilty as the doctor or nurse who performs the procedure or prescribes the pill.

From a legal standpoint, it would make sense that everyone involved in the illegal act would be complicit in the illegality, and thus all parties should be punished. It would make no sense to punish the doctor and not the woman, much as it would make no sense to punish the drug dealers and not the drug users. If abortion is illegal, why would the woman seeking to commit the illegality not be guilty while the doctor facilitating it would be? Therefore, if they were to really adhere to the logic of their position– abortion is murder– then they should be in favor of charging women who get abortions with murder. But they won’t say that, because the optics are bad for them. So instead they turn to a “the mother is also a victim” kind of tactic, which is completely untenable from a logical standpoint. Anti-abortion activists’ end goal is to make abortion illegal (or illegal to provide in most circumstances), however they don’t want anyone to articulate, as Trump did, the logical conclusion of that premise, because they know that their position would rapidly erode should this absolutely logical consequence of the ban be made explicit.

After all, as Kristof points out, “The moment the focus shifts to criminalizing women, sympathy shifts.” Trump’s comments have highlighted a major flaw and glaring hypocrisy in many anti-abortion activists’ arguments. Therefore, instead of those who are pro-choice attacking Trump for these comments, they should take him at his word and agree with him that penalizing women would be the logical consequence of making abortion illegal.