Far right pastor Kevin Swanson

When Donald Trump made his now-infamous statement that legal abortion needs to be banned and women who have abortions should be punished, conservative “pro-life” groups and pundits were quick to deny this was their actual position.

The talking point they all agreed upon: yes, sure, they do want to completely ban abortion, but women wouldn’t face any punishment. Only doctors would be prosecuted.

Of course, this makes no logical sense; it’s basically a deceptive smokescreen to hide the real consequences of their anti-choice position from women. After all, if abortion is legally judged to be the same as murder, then how can you say the murderer shouldn’t be punished?

And let’s not pretend women aren’t already being punished by the political actions of the anti-choice movement; they’re being penalized by having clinics closed, “pro-life” picketers who scream at them, and odious, expensive, time-wasting restrictions placed on the process by Republicans across the country.

As I tweeted a few days ago:

Oh please. What do you think will happen if you get what you want and abortion is made illegal? At least be honest about it. @March_for_Life

— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) March 30, 2016

What really upset groups like March For Life is that Donald Trump, with his lack of political experience, took their position to its logical conclusion and said outright what they usually try to obfuscate.

But not all of the “pro-lifers” are dishonest enough to keep up the pretense (or maybe not smart enough, which amounts to the same thing, I guess). Right Wing Watch highlights two perfect examples today.

First, far right pastor Kevin Swanson (who recently hosted an event that featured an appearance by presidential candidate Ted Cruz, at which Swanson called for gays to be executed), who says abortion “ought to be a criminal action.”

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“The answer to this,” he said, “is the lex talionis does bring out that if a hazardous condition is created such that a child would be likely to die, whether in the womb or outside of the womb, there ought to be some level of prosecution going on. In that case, it may be just a fine or a prison sentence of some sort. But the principle of the matter is that it’s a criminal action to kill a child, to murder a child, it ought to be a criminal action. And, now, there ought to be, I believe, some leeway as to what sort of prosecution, what sort of sentence might be used in that case.”

World Net Daily columnist Gina Loudon gets even more honest than Swanson in her defense of Donald Trump’s comments.

Abortion rights opponents who criticize Trump, Loudon argued, have decided to “jump on the gender identity ‘women are always victims’ bandwagon” rather than argue that women should be held accountable through prosecutions, making Trump “even more pro-life than the [sic] some of the pro-life groups out there.”

Donald Trump has no high-paid consultants around him telling him what he can and can’t say, even on the liberal’s favorite conservative-killing topic of abortion. They talk all about the woman’s right to choose as if women are so frail and helpless they shouldn’t bear any of the personal responsibility conservatives talk about in other political realms.

Trump knew this: If a person hires a contractor to kill someone, under the law, both the person hiring the contracted killer and the killer are held accountable. In his non-political mind, why would he think any differently?

Conservatives herald “the rule of law” when discussing illegal immigration, but why do the rules suddenly change when we are talking about the killing of an unborn child?

Last but far from least, as we noted in 2014, National Review columnist Kevin D. Williamson takes what might be the most extreme position of all; he calls for women who have abortions to be hanged, along with their doctors.

Kudos to these conservatives for having the guts not to try to hide where their so-called “pro-life” position leads: to criminal penalties — even execution! — for desperate women. This can’t be emphasized enough, because this is what the “pro-life” movement really stands for.