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Answering those questions may let you know whether you've been "gaslighted" away from your conservative values/principles like so many pthers seem to have been...

I'll take your challenge.

What's your take on Trump's comment that if abortion were to become illegal, then women who get them should face some sort of punishment?

Fetuses are humans, as a consequence, women who procure abortions have committed murder. There are some women who do this out of the coldness of their heart and there are some women who do this because they have been repeatedly told that a baby is a punishment and there are some women who do this because a boyfriend/father/etc is putting a large quantity of pressure on them. Women who fall into the last category are in need of help and mercy, not punishment, though community service would be acceptable to me. Women in the middle category probably do need some punishment. Women in the first category should go to jail for murder.

The determination of which is something best left to prosecutorial/judicial discretion or a jury to decide.

Then, what's your take on Cruz trying to leverage this by pandering to the abortion crowd?

I think Ted Cruz gets his talking points on this matter from the pro-life media who seem to view Trump as falling into the category of the enemy of my enemy should be scorned.

Fetuses are humans, as a consequence, women who procure abortions have committed murder. There are some women who do this out of the coldness of their heart and there are some women who do this because they have been repeatedly told that a baby is a punishment and there are some women who do this because a boyfriend/father/etc is putting a large quantity of pressure on them. Women who fall into the last category are in need of help and mercy, not punishment, though community service would be acceptable to me. Women in the middle category probably do need some punishment. Women in the first category should go to jail for murder.

More food for thought - the way the question was cadged ("If it becomes illegal..."), what Trump was really doing was supporting the rule of law - abortion was used to get some to pretty much denounce the rule of law.

Agree some women might need help and mercy, but would that be the same thought if they were "cajoled/pressured into killing a 4 year old? Where does rule of law stop for those mentally able to understand right from wrong but who opt for wrong as the easier way to go about it?

We could probably run through a hundred permutaions and special sets of circumstances but ultimately, this has been turned into a debate on abortion when the real issue is rule of law - if somemone does something illegal, contrary to a valid law, should there be some sort of punishment (Trump's words were that there should be "some sort of punishment" which indicate he was speaking in a general sense about a question of rule of law with abortion as a subtopic.) and there can be a lot of different answers depending on one's points of view on a number of subtopics.