Melania Trump on Thursday signaled she is taking a different stance than her husband on access to abortion rights.
While Donald Trump has touted his role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the former first lady said in a video promoting her upcoming book that women’s “individual freedom is a fundamental right that I safeguard.”
“Without a doubt there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom,” Melania Trump said. “What does ‘My body, my choice’ really mean?”
Melania Trump’s book, due to publish Tuesday, goes into much more detail about her belief in the need for access to abortion to remain legal, according to The Guardian, which obtained an early copy of the book.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” Melania Trump wrote, according to the Guardian. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”
The timing of her public comments in favor of abortion rights — just a month before Election Day — reinjects an issue into the political conversation that Republicans have largely sought to avoid litigating, instead focusing on topics such as the economy and immigration under President Joe Biden’s administration.
While the former president himself has criticized states with particularly restrictive abortion laws, his position has been that states should be free to set whatever abortion regulations they choose — and the 2022 Supreme Court decision that he has bragged about has since prompted some states to ban all abortion.
After avoiding for months saying how he will vote in a Florida referendum this month to expand access to abortion beyond the six weeks currently allowed by the state, Trump pleased anti-abortion leaders when he said a month ago that he would vote against the measure. But he has continued to appear uncomfortable discussing the issue, repeatedly declining to say whether he would veto federal restrictions before abruptly announcing on Truth Social during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that he would veto a national ban.
A spokesperson for Kamala Harris’ campaign, Sarafina Chitika, said in a statement that “Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump Abortion Ban that threatens their health, their freedom, and their lives.” Chitika added that if Trump wins, “he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women, and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, said. “The Harris campaign is lying, again, because they are losing.”
“President Trump has been unequivocally clear: he will NOT sign a federal abortion ban when he is re-elected,” Leavitt continued. “He strongly believes abortion is an issue that must be decided at the state-level.”
Trump’s campaign did not comment on the former first lady’s position on abortion.
Abortion has been a political landmine for Republicans to navigate, particularly in the two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. States who have put the issue up for a vote in ballot measures have seen abortion rights proponents consistently win out over those opposed to abortion access, even in otherwise conservative states.
In a second excerpt from her new book obtained by The Guardian, Melania Trump wrote that she urged her husband to end his administration’s policy of separating children from their families when entering the southern border illegally.
“While I support strong borders, what was going on at the border was simply unacceptable. I immediately addressed my deep concerns with Donald regarding the family separations, emphasizing the trauma it was causing these families,” she wrote. “As a mother myself, I stressed: ‘The government should not be taking children away from their parents.’ I communicated with great clarity … ‘This has to stop.’
She added that the policy was changed soon after.
