Melania Trump says she supports abortion rights, putting her at odds with the Republican Party

CHICAGO (AP) — Melania Trump voiced her support for abortion rights Thursday ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, drawing a stark contrast with her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, on the crucial election issue.

In a video posted to her and her own husband, whom she had difficulty finding. He has a unified message on abortion, even though he is wedged between abortion opponents within his base and the majority of Americans who support abortion rights.

“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I protect,” she said in the video. “There is no doubt that there is no room for compromise when it comes to this fundamental right that all women have from birth: individual freedom. What does “my body, my choice” really mean?”

The video appears to confirm excerpts from her self-titled memoir, which The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

Melania Trump has rarely publicly expressed her personal political views and has been largely absent from the campaign. However, in her memoirs, due to be published next Tuesday, she argues that the decision to terminate a pregnancy should be left to a woman and her doctor, “free from any interference or pressure from the government,” according to the published documents Excerpts are shown.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to decide what she does with her own body?” she wrote, according to The Guardian. “A woman’s fundamental right to individual freedom and her own life gives her the power to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”

Melania Trump writes that she “carried this belief with me throughout my adult life.”

These views stand in stark contrast to the Republican Party’s anti-abortion platform and to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly touted the appointment of the three Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v. Wade, who bragged about returning the abortion issue to the states. Democrats blame the former president for the severe deterioration of reproductive rights as abortion bans were implemented across much of the country after overturning the landmark case that had granted a constitutional right to abortion.

National abortion group SBA Pro-Life America condemned the former first lady’s views on abortion, including her comments about abortion later in pregnancy, but said her “priority is defeating Kamala Harris.”

“Women with unplanned pregnancies are crying out for more resources, not more abortions,” the organization’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said in a statement to the AP. “We must have compassion for them and for the babies in the womb who suffer brutal abortions.”

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign noted Trump’s role in ending Roe v. Wade in a statement responding to Melania Trump’s defense of abortion rights.

“Unfortunately for women across America, Ms. Trump’s husband strongly disagrees and is the reason more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” Harris said Campaign spokesman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Donald Trump has made it clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortions nationwide, penalize women and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.”

Donald Trump said Tuesday he would veto a federal abortion ban. This was the first time he said this explicitly, having previously refused to answer questions on the subject. But abortion rights advocates are skeptical and say Trump cannot be trusted not to restrict reproductive rights.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Melania Trump’s book or video on Thursday.

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said the memoir is another example of “the Trumps playing voters like a fiddle.”

“As president, (Trump) has made it his mission to overturn Roe v. Wade,” she said in a statement. “Melania stood by him and never once publicly distanced herself from his actions until weeks before an election in which our committees will be on the ballot again and they will lose voters because of this issue. Read between the lines.”

Democratic strategist Brittany Crampsie called the release of the memoir a “clear attempt to appeal to more moderate voters and moderate JD Vance’s clearly extreme views on the issue.” But she is skeptical that the move would benefit Trump as his changing views have already confused voters and sowed distrust.

Melania Trump also defends abortions later in pregnancy, claiming that “most abortions in later stages of pregnancy were the result of severe fetal abnormalities that would likely have resulted in death or stillbirth of the child.” Perhaps even the death of the mother.

“These cases were extremely rare and typically occurred after multiple consultations between the woman and her doctor,” she writes.

These views seem at odds with those of her husband, who often parrots misinformation about abortion later in pregnancy and falsely claims that Democrats support “post-birth” abortion, even though infanticide is illegal in every state.

Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California Davis School of Law who focuses on reproductive rights and history, said it was unclear whether publishing the memoir so close to the election was an attempt to help Donald Trump. However, she noted that Melania Trump and Trump’s split on the issue is not historically uncommon.

There is “a pretty long history of first ladies being more supportive of abortion rights than their husbands,” Ziegler said, including Betty Ford, a vocal abortion rights supporter and wife of former President Gerald Ford.

Donald Trump promoted his wife’s book at a rally in New York in September, telling his supporters to “go and get her book.” It is unclear whether the former president has read the book.

“Go out and buy it,” he told the crowd. “It’s great. And if she says bad things about me, I’ll call you all and say, ‘Don’t buy it.'”