Melania Trump supports abortion rights: “There is no room for compromise”

Former Republican first lady Melania Trump on Thursday appeared to express strong support for abortion rights, potentially exposing a bitter split with her husband, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, over a key election issue.

“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I hold dear,” Melania Trump said in the latest promotional video for her upcoming memoir, “Melania.”

“Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this fundamental right that all women have from birth,” she said in the 28-second video posted on X.

“Individual freedom”, added the wife of the former president. “What does ‘my body, my choice’ really mean?”

The post came less than a day after The Guardian reported that Melania Trump passionately and unequivocally defends total abortion rights in her new book.

“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference to have children, based on their beliefs, free from any interference or pressure from the government,” Trump writes in the book, according to the Guardian.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her body? A woman’s fundamental right to individual liberty, for her own life, gives her the authority to terminate a pregnancy if she chooses,” it said. she. writes.

“Limiting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is like denying her control over her body,” she continues. “I have carried this belief with me throughout my adult life.”

CNBC has not received a copy of the book, which will be released on Tuesday.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on The Guardian’s report or Melania Trump’s latest video.

Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign, however, quickly weighed down.

“Unfortunately for women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband strongly disagrees with her and is the reason more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, liberty and lives,” the spokeswoman said. Harris, Sarafina. Chitika said in a statement to CNBC.

“Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and limit women’s access to reproductive health care,” Chitika said.

Melania Trump rarely shares her personal political views. And she has been almost entirely absent from her husband’s recent presidential campaign.

A perennial issue in American politics, reproductive rights have been in the spotlight since June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Legal precedent had protected federal abortion protections for nearly 50 years.

Trump appointed three of the five conservative justices who cast the deciding votes to overturn Roe and empower individual states to set their own abortion rules.

Now, 20 states have either banned abortion or imposed stricter restrictions than those allowed under Roe, according to The New York Times analysis.

Trump has repeatedly taken credit for ending Roe, falsely claiming there was unanimous support among legal scholars for eliminating abortion as a constitutional right.

But he has also tried to play down the significance of the high court ruling, which sparked a political backlash and remains deeply unpopular with voters.

The decision was seen as a key factor in Democrats’ much better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have worked to remind voters of Trump’s role in rolling back women’s reproductive rights and to blame him squarely for the growing women’s health crisis and public outrage over caused by the end of Roe.

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Walz and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, the Minnesota governor shared stories of individual women who have been adversely affected by the new restrictions on reproductive rights.