Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee in the Dec. 12 Senate election, said he supports Alabama's abortion laws as they are, saying that people are "fairly comfortable" with the current law.

In an interview this week with AL.com at his Huntsville campaign office, Jones said he wanted "to be clear" where he stood in the aftermath of a national interview with MSNBC that included abortion and led some political observers in the state to speculate he had damaged his campaign.

During a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday, Jones - who faces Republican Roy Moore in the Senate election -- was asked by AL.com about his position on abortion.

"Those comments, everybody wants to attack you so they are going to make out on those comments what they want to their political advantage," Jones said. "To be clear, I fully support a woman's freedom to choose to what happens to her own body. That is an intensely, intensely personal decision that only she, in consultation with her god, her doctor, her partner or family, that's her choice.

"Having said that, the law for decades has been that late-term procedures are generally restricted except in the case of medical necessity. That's what I support. I don't see any changes in that. It is a personal decision."

In the Sept. 27 MSNBC interview, host Chuck Todd asked Jones about abortion.

Jones said he's a "firm believer that a woman should have to freedom to choose what happens to her own body" and that he opposed a ban on abortions after the 20th week of gestation, which is a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and now under consideration in the Senate.

Alabama law allows abortions to be performed as late as 22 weeks into a pregnancy.

"I'm not in favor of anything that is going to infringe on a woman's right and her freedom to choose," Jones said in the MSNBC interview. "That's just the position that I've had for many years. It's a position I continue to have. But I want to make sure people understand, that once a baby is born, I'm going to be there for that child. That's where I become a right-to-lifer."

Watch the MSNBC interview below. The discussion on abortion begins at the 5:10 mark.

The interview then shifted to a question on gun rights, leaving open-ended Jones' position on how late into a pregnancy an abortion should be allowed.

Jones' comments in the MSNBC interview led to a sharp response from the Moore campaign.

"Doug Jones has advocated for Planned Parenthood," said Bill Armistead, chair of Moore's campaign, in the Oct. 3 statement. "And just this past week, he went on the record stating without hesitation that a woman should have the right to an abortion all the way up until the day before the baby is delivered. This is an outrageously extreme position that is further to the left than even some of the most liberal abortion-rights activists in the country. Doug Jones has proven himself to be completely out of step with Alabama values and mainstream America. Judge Moore believes in the sanctity of life and opposes the taking of the life of an unborn child."

In announcing its endorsement of Moore on Thursday, the National Right to Life seized on the vagueness of Jones' MSNBC interview.

"There is a stark contrast between Judge Moore, who supports legal protection for unborn children, and Doug Jones, who supports abortion for any reason until birth," Karen Cross, National Right to Life political director, said in a statement released by the Moore campaign. "Alabama voters concerned with the protection of the most vulnerable members of the human family should vote to send Judge Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate."

Jones said his comments in September were made in the unspoken context of his opposition to the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Arizona, in January and passed the House less than a week after the Jones interview on MSNBC.

The bill passed the House 237-189 largely along partisan lines. All but two Republicans supported the bill and all but three Democrats opposed it. Alabama's six Republicans in the House voted for the bill and Terri Sewell, the long Alabama Democrat, voted against it.

Jones said the bill, which prohibited abortions after 20 weeks, mandated certain requirements be met to permit abortions after 20 weeks in the case of a medical emergency, rape or incest.

Among the requirements, according to the bill, are that adult women seeking to end a pregnancy from rape must receive counseling for the rape and receive medical treatment from the rape. In the case of a minor, the rape or incest must be reported to law enforcement or an investigative agency

It also allows for a post-20 week abortion if the pregnant woman's life is in physical damage but the pregnancy cannot be ended for psychological or emotional conditions.

"I think that cases of medical necessity, the bill that's currently pending would in fact put so many caveats on there that, in effect, could never be met," Jones said.

Jones said his position would be to leave abortion laws unchanged.

"I think people are fairly comfortable with where the law has been for decades and that is that a woman has that right to choose because it is intensely personal and I don't think me or Roy Moore or the state of Alabama or the United States government should take that right away," Jones said.

As perhaps the most hot-button political issue in the country, Jones' comments in the MSNBC interview received criticism even from a member of his own party.

"I can't for the life of me figure out why Jones would put such a clear pro-choice stance at the forefront of his campaign," Matthew Tyson, a marketing strategist and a member of the Calhoun County Democratic Committee, told AL.com reporter John Sharp for an Oct. 8 story.

The abortion issue also sharply distinguishes Jones and Moore.

"Our foundation (as a country) has been shaken," Moore said during his opening comments in the Sept. 21 debate with Luther Strange before the GOP primary runoff. "Crime, corruption, immorality, abortion, sodomy, sexual perversion sweep our land."

In announcing his candidacy for Senate in April, Moore said, "Our families are being crippled by divorce and abortion."

And in a 2010 speech in Huntsville, Moore described Christians' apathetic attitude on opposing abortion as "the sin of silence."

Jones said abortion is not an issue he wants to define his campaign.

"This is a decision or an issue that divides people," he said. "But it's not an issue that affects people on a daily basis, not like health care, not like jobs. We want to stay focused on those issues and try to make sure when people have a different opinion than I do, we can sit down and talk.

"Let's talk about the issues that you talk about with your spouse and your children. I have seen and what we believe is the people of this state are tired of the divisive issues. Because those issues are just used as political divisiveness and political tools to divide people and people get hurt in the long run because they ignore the issues that are critical to them."

Updated today, Nov. 2, 2017, at 11:41 a.m. with National Right to Life endorsing Moore.