Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton blasted her Republican rival Donald Trump on Monday over his muddled stance on abortion, minutes after the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive Texas abortion law.
If she becomes president, Clinton suggested in a tweet, women won't be punished for exercising their right to terminate a pregnancy.
The tweet was a not-so-subtle dig at Trump's statement earlier this year that women who seek out abortions should be punished if the procedure is ever outlawed. “There has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said at a town hall in March.
The statement quickly drew sharp criticism from both sides of the abortion debate. The anti-abortion movement has traditionally argued that abortion providers should be punished, but not women who seek abortions.
Trump's campaign immediately backtracked, putting out a statement contradicting his earlier comments. In cases of abortion, it said, "the woman is a victim."
But a few days later, Trump reversed himself yet again, telling CBS that the laws on abortion "are set… And I think we have to leave it that way.”
Clinton's tweet is a reminder of how many different issues Trump stumbled over during the Republican presidential primary. In addition to his controversial remarks about abortion, Trump made conflicting statements about how he would tackle Social Security, tax cuts, nuclear weapons, foreign relations and education policy.
Trump did not immediately react to the Supreme Court ruling on Monday.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.