Former US First Lady Melania Trump. Photo / AFP
Former first lady Melania Trump, in her upcoming memoir, offers full-throated support for abortion rights – a position that puts her at odds with many in her husband’s party, including the former President.
According to the Guardian newspaper, which reviewed an advance copy of the book, titled Melania, the former first lady writes that “it is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the Government”.
Former President Donald Trump has claimed credit for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Trump, as President, nominated three of the conservative justices who helped make the landmark ruling on abortion rights in 2022. Trump more recently has advocated leaving abortion policy to the states.
In a promotional video for the memoir posted on her X account, Melania Trump said she believes individual freedom is “a fundamental principle 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,” she said. “What does ‘My body, my choice,’ really mean?”
Melania Trump’s defence of abortion rights in her upcoming book – which is set for release next week, a month before the election – marks her most in-depth public comments on the issue. As first lady, she avoided making her policy views public, and has made few public appearances as her husband campaigns for a second term.
In the book, she questions Republican efforts to curtail abortion rights, saying that restricting “a women’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body”.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she asks. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”
She adds: “I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
Melania Trump’s comments come as her husband and the Republican Party have struggled to find a winning message on abortion post-Roe that placates both the conservative base and the broader majority of Americans, who support abortion rights. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll in August found 62% of Americans oppose the overturning of that five-decade-old decision, while 35% support it.
Abortion rights advocates suggested Melania Trump’s comments were calculated to appease voters as Republicans lose support on the issue. They also noted that, as first lady, Melania Trump did not publicly defend abortion rights, even as her husband and his administration actively sought to curtail them.
Anti-abortion advocates condemned the former first lady’s writings, while Republican strategists said they may matter little to voters who they say are used to shifting messages on the topic from Trump but trust him to continue opposing efforts to reinstate nationwide access to abortion.
Spokespeople for Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Republicans nationwide had long called for national restrictions on abortion, and the party’s platform during the 2016 election endorsed legislation that would enact a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Now, however, the GOP has sought to moderate its position on the issue after abysmal congressional losses in the 2022 midterms, where many anti-abortion Republicans were defeated by Democrats who campaigned on the promise to defend reproductive rights. Democrats have doubled down on that strategy this year, highlighting Republicans’ unpopular positions on abortion and other reproductive healthcare, such as in vitro fertilisation.
The Trump campaign’s conflict over how to navigate abortion messaging was spotlighted in August, when Trump suggested he would support an amendment on the Florida ballot that would reverse the state’s six-week ban. A swift backlash from conservative anti-abortion groups followed, and the next day he said he would vote against it.
In Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (Ohio) – who ran for Senate in 2022 on a platform that promised to “end abortion,” – aimed to appeal to moderate and independent voters by saying that the Republican Party has to do a better job in “earning the American people’s trust back” on abortion. He did not specify the party’s platform on the issue.
On Thursday, anti-abortion groups expressed displeasure with Melania Trump’s position. In a statement to the Post, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser criticised the former first lady for referring to abortion as a “freedom”.
“Women with unplanned pregnancies are crying out for more resources, not more abortions,” she said in a statement.
Dannenfelser emphasised that her organisation’s priority is to defeat Vice-President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party’s agenda, characterising their support for national abortion rights as pushing “no-limits abortion on demand”.
Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, were sceptical of Melania Trump’s comments on abortion.
Mini Timmaraju, president of the abortion rights advocacy group Reproductive Freedom For All, said she found the former first lady’s writings on abortion “disgusting, “outrageous” and “shameful”.
“If she actually believes what she’s saying, much like her husband, she has blood on her hands,” Timmaraju said. “Women are dying – it’s been documented – because of his decisions and what he did to the Supreme Court. Where was Melania Trump then?”
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood, accused the Trumps of trying to play voters “like a fiddle”.
“This is just the latest example of politicians – or the politically adjacent – shifting their position in rhetoric but not in action,” Johnson said in a statement, noting Melania Trump “never once publicly” disavowed her husband’s actions “until weeks before an election where our bodies are again on the ballot and they are losing voters to this issue”.
Democrats, meanwhile, have focused on reminding voters of Republicans’ previous stances and opposition to national protections for abortion rights.
In a statement Thursday, Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for Harris’ campaign, said that, “sadly for the women across America, Mrs Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her”.
Trump, Chitika added, “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”.
Lauren Zelt, a Republican consultant who worked on Senator Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, told the on Friday that she doesn’t believe Melania Trump’s new comments on her views on abortion will move the needle among Republican voters.
“President Trump’s previous stances on abortion didn’t seem to stop Republican voters in 2016,” Zelt said. “And I don’t think that this is going to change the way voters perceive the campaign on Election Day.”
Chelsea White's husband was arrested at a Tennessee checkpoint in May.