Melania Trump signals support for abortion rights

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.

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.