Former US first lady Melania Trump.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Washington: Melania Trump, the former first lady, said in a video on Thursday that there was "no room for compromise" on a woman's right to "individual freedom," a day after a reported excerpt from her coming memoir said she supported abortion rights.
Trump's comments landed as former President Donald Trump and members of his party have struggled to convey a softer impression of their opposition to abortion, a key issue threatening his support with female voters and his attempt to return to the White House.
She made her remarks in a promotional video for a new memoir scheduled for release Tuesday.
"Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard," she said in the video, which was posted to her account on the social platform X.
"Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth, individual freedom. What does 'my body, my choice' really mean?"
On Wednesday evening, The Guardian published excerpts from Melania Trump's book, in which she went further than her words in the video: "A woman's fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes."
She also defended some abortions performed in the later stages of pregnancy, mostly out of medical necessity or to save the life of the mother: "As a community, we should embrace these common-sense standards. Again, timing matters." But she did not elaborate on which policies she would like to see enacted in a post-Roe landscape.
A spokesperson for Skyhorse Publishing, the publisher of the book, did not respond to a request to confirm the book's contents or supply an early copy.
One person close to Donald Trump, who insisted on anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly, said the campaign had been aware that the video was being released, but suggested that it was an attempt by Melania Trump to sell her book and not part of a coordinated effort to soften the former president's image. The person noted that she and her husband do not always take the same views.
In an interview with Fox News on Thursday evening, Donald Trump said that he had told his wife to stick with her heart when she discussed the issue with him. "We spoke about it," he said. "And I said: 'You have to write what you believe. I'm not going to tell what you to do. You have to write what you believe.'"
Still, her remarks align with a message his campaign has been trying to send in recent weeks: that the former president is not an ardent opponent of abortion rights. About one-third of Republicans and a majority of independents support access to the procedure. Her soft-focus approach may appeal to voters who have chosen what they want to glean from Trump's kaleidoscopic views on abortion.
"This is a disgusting attempt to politicize an issue that has created so much undue suffering and even death in communities with abortion bans," said Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion rights group. "Trump did this. I don't think Melania cares about reproductive freedom; but if she does, where was she when he appointed the justices who overturned Roe, and unleashed the crisis we're living in today? This is merely a desperate move from a desperate campaign to continue to do what they do best, lie to the American public."
At the same time, Melania Trump's comments have frustrated anti-abortion activists who believe that the former president would advance their cause and want to remain in good standing with him if he wins in November.
"The women of America are capable of great strength and creativity," Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, pushed back cautiously on social media. "They are naturally inclined to speak for those who are powerless. Abortion is not the source of their freedom and liberation."
The tension reveals the marked flip from the status anti-abortion activists enjoyed in October 2020, when Ivanka Trump declared in an interview days before the election, "I am pro-life, and unapologetically so."
Donald Trump is acutely aware of the political pressures he faces over abortion rights, but has been unable to figure out exactly what to say or where to land on specifics. He repeatedly boasts that he "terminated" Roe, yet wrote on his social media website after the Democratic National Convention in August that he would be great for "reproductive rights," a phrase more associated with Planned Parenthood than with conservatives.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, led by a conservative majority with three justices appointed by Trump, Republicans have toyed with the idea of a national abortion ban. Democrats, for their part, have won repeated electoral victories on the back of the issue, and voters even in red states have passed ballot measures to protect access to the procedure.
Now Democrats are seizing on abortion restrictions in Republican-led states -- and the harrowing stories about women who died or faced life-threatening complications as a result -- as a galvanizing issue before November.
Trump has taken various positions on abortion rights over the years. In 1999, as he considered a presidential run as an independent, he called himself "very pro-choice." A dozen years later, as he weighed running as a Republican, he changed his stance. "Just very briefly, I'm pro-life," he told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011.
In the 2016 campaign, as he tried to figure out what he should say on the issue, he said women who had abortions should be subject to some form of punishment.
But since the overturning of Roe, he has waffled even more. In February, he privately told associates he liked the idea of a 16-week national ban, but wanted to wait until the primary race was over to say something.
He then reversed himself publicly in April, saying the issue should be left to the states, but he declined to say whether he would veto a national ban if one reached his desk as president. Despite saying states should decide for themselves, he has called Florida's six-week ban a "terrible mistake" -- but then, after more apparent vacillation, said he would vote against a ballot measure there that would expand the window for women to get abortions.
At Trump's debate last month against Vice President Kamala Harris, he again declined to say whether he would veto a national ban on abortion, saying just this week for the first time that he would.
On Wednesday, in an all-capital-letters post on social media, Trump said: "Everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!)."
He went on to say he supported exceptions for abortion if a woman had been raped or was a victim of incest, or if her life was in danger.
Regardless of Trump's personal beliefs, his administration pushed through the greatest restrictions on abortion rights in generations, not only appointing the justices who overturned Roe but also moving to restrict abortion access through executive actions.
Some Americans believe otherwise.
Even now, polling shows that nearly 1 in 5 voters in battleground states says that President Joe Biden is responsible for ending a constitutional right to abortion. Trump supporters were even more likely to blame Democrats for the abortion bans.
Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for Harris' campaign, said in a statement that Melania Trump's comments were at odds with her husband's, and that Donald Trump "has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women's access to reproductive health care."
During Trump's 2016 campaign, Melania Trump told GQ magazine that she did not wade into politics: "Those policies are my husband's job," she said. As first lady, she did not discuss her views on abortion publicly or privately, according to two former administration officials who worked in her East Wing, one of whom insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations.
The other, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary and one of Trump's longest-serving aides during the administration, said that the issue never came up. Grisham, who has since released a memoir about her time working for the Trumps and spoke at the Democratic National Convention, did not see a master plan behind Melania Trump's comments.
"I'm actually quite confused," she said. "At the end of the day, she's trying to sell more books."
Trump has a long but inconsistent history of using her image to support her husband. In April 2011, she appeared on ABC's "The View" to bolster his false claim that President Barack Obama had been born in Kenya, and his ensuing campaign that the president should release his birth certificate.
"It's not only Donald who wants to see it," Trump said. "It's American people who voted for him and who didn't vote for him."
In October 2016, Trump went on television again to defend a leaked audio recording from "Access Hollywood" in which Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women by the genitals. On CNN, she dismissed the comment as "boy talk" and suggested that the show's former host, Billy Bush, had goaded him into saying "dirty and bad stuff."
More recently, Trump has declined to join her husband on the campaign trail. But she was paid $237,500 for an April speaking event with the Log Cabin Republicans, according to Donald Trump's 2024 financial disclosure form. The source of that payment is unclear.
Post-White House memoirs have long been a way for first ladies to express views they might have strategically muted to help their husbands politically. Between the book deal and the promotional tours, memoirs can also be cash cows.
Melania Trump's representatives have taken an aggressive approach to promoting her book and soliciting money for her tour. CNN reported on Thursday that Skyhorse Publishing had asked the network to pay a $250,000 "licensing fee" in exchange for an interview with the former first lady. Paying for interviews is considered to be deeply unethical in many American newsrooms.
Skyhorse had sent the proposal alongside a nondisclosure agreement, which the network said it did not sign. Tony Lyons, the president and publisher of Skyhorse, later told CNN that the payment request was a mistake and that Trump did not have knowledge of the arrangement.
A spokesperson for Fox News, which has aired two recent interviews with Trump, said Thursday that the network had not paid for them, or for licensing fees for photos.