Donald Trump says a ban on abortion should include 'some form of punishment' for women

Donald Trump said Wednesday that women should be punished for having abortions in a hypothetical world in which abortions were made illegal in the US.

The Republican presidential frontrunner made the comments after after being repeatedly questioned on the subject by MSNBC's Chris Matthews during a pretaped town-hall event.

"There has to be some form of punishment," Trump said.

After Matthews asked Trump if he's for women being imprisoned for lengthy sentences, Trump said the exact punishment would be "something we have to decide on."

Trump said:

They've set the law and frankly the judges, you're going to have a very big election coming up for that reason because you have judges where it's a real tipping point and with the loss of [Antonin] Scalia, who was a very strong justice, this presidential election is going to be very important.

He added that the legality of abortion depends on the November election. There is currently a vacancy on the Supreme Court and the next president might have the opportunity to appoint several justices. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme ruled in 1973 that women possess a constitutional right to have abortions.

"When you say what's the law, nobody knows what the law is going to be," Trump said Wednesday. "It depends on who gets elected."

Trump also said that he understood women would have to resort to going to "illegal places" to have an abortions should the law change, but "you have to ban it."

Watch the answer from Trump's interview with Matthews below: