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Huckabee: Trump Gave 'Terrible Answer' on Abortion Question

(MSNBC/"Morning Joe")

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Thursday, 31 March 2016 10:42 AM EDT

Donald Trump "wasn't prepared" for questions about his stance on abortion, and "of course you don't" punish women for going through the procedure, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Thursday.

"It's clear he had not thought through that whole idea of do you punish the woman," Huckabee said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, pointing out that he "can't think of anybody more pro-life than me."

Pro-life supporters have "never said there is some punishment that ought to be meted out to [someone] who had an abortion" Huckabee continued. "Saving the baby and saving the mothers and being pro-life means you're trying to make things better, not see if you can hurt somebody."

And, Huckabee said, Trump's response during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews was a "terrible answer."

"Nobody is going to defend what he said because the idea of we've got to have some punishment and in his answer it looked like he was fumbling around," said Huckabee. "Let's just lay that on the table. It was a mess-up. But to say he hasn't thought through the abortion issue, that's a stretch."

But at the same time, Huckabee believes that Trump has made a transformation from being "very pro-choice to pro-life."

"I've heard it publicly and privately and in an intimate moment with him, and I believe that is a sincere understanding as he faced this in a more personal level rather than philosophical," said Huckabee.

"I've listened to what he said about when a person in his family and [when] looking at sonograms of his own children. I've heard that from prominent liberals I won't out on this show, some that would shock you, who told me when they saw sonograms of their own kids it gave them a double take."

Further, Huckabee said he wants to know why nobody asks Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton "why, at her age, she still believes in late-term and partial-birth abortion?"