Why is Melania Trump coming out for abortion rights?

Melania Trump hasn’t said a lot or been seen much during the 2024 campaign. But on the eve of the election, the former first lady has now stepped forward to make a major political statement.

It’s one that happens to be out of step with her husband; she has come out unequivocally in favor of abortion rights.

“A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,” Trump says in her new book, according to a copy obtained by the Guardian. Echoing the rhetoric of the political left, she goes on to say that restricting abortion is “the same as denying her control over her own body.”

She followed that up with a social media video Thursday declaring: “There is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right.”

All of which has more than a few people wondering what’s going on. Why has Trump chosen this particular moment to finally make a splash — really her first ripples of any kind — in the 2024 election? And a splash that sounds so different from her husband and elevates a troubling issue for him?

Many on the left are convinced it’s strategic. And there’s something to be said for that.

Former president Donald Trump has sought rhetorical distance from the hard-line antiabortion elements in his party, as this issue has increasingly troubled and politically endangered the GOP. Trump is trailing badly among women, particularly educated women. He has tried to label this a state issue and leave it at that, even spending months declining to weigh in on an abortion rights amendment that will be on the ballot in his home state of Florida. (He ultimately came out against it, even as he has criticized six-week abortion bans like the one Florida has.)

What better way to wink and nod at the idea that maybe the Trumps didn’t believe in this stuff all along and that women who think abortion rights are important should feel comfortable voting for him? Trump, after all, once pronounced himself to be “strongly pro-choice.”

It’s abundantly clear that he needs the votes of abortion rights supporters, and probably lots of them. Recent polling suggests as many as half of Republican voters in some key states are planning to vote for an abortion rights amendment such as Florida’s. Maybe Melania Trump helps secure some abortion rights votes.

But there are simpler explanations here that don’t involve such four-dimensional chess. And it’s worth emphasizing how much Trump’s comments undercut what little her husband is saying about the abortion issue today.

For example, the Guardian reports that Trump not only writes that she supports abortion rights but that she points to the fact that late-term abortions are “extremely rare.” She writes that they are mostly “the result of severe fetal abnormalities that probably would have led to the death or stillbirth of the child.”

That’s a stark contrast to her husband, whose big talking point right now — one of the few things he does say — is that Democrats are the extremists on abortion because they support late-term abortions.

Donald Trump said at last month’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that allowing abortion so late makes Democrats “radical.”

“You should ask,” he told the moderators, “will she allow abortion in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month?”

Here’s Trump’s own wife basically calling that popular Trump talking point a red herring.

Melania Trump’s comments about how there should be “no compromise” on abortion rights also undercut her husband. He has repeatedly pitched the patchwork of state laws on this as a good thing, and even talked about how he would somehow forge a “deal” on abortion rights that would make everyone happy. She’s effectively saying any kind of “deal” or restriction is unacceptable.

It would be one thing for Trump to say she supports abortion rights; it’s another thing for her to go this far in ways that make even Donald Trump’s present-day positions sound extreme and anti-women’s rights.

(Similarly on this front: Melania Trump in her book reportedly writes that she urged her husband to abandon his hard-line family-separation immigration policy, pointing to the “trauma” it was causing. That wouldn’t seem to do him many favors.)

The most likely, Occam’s razor-type explanation for all of this is that Melania Trump actually believes in abortion rights, and she’s using her stance not as a political strategy but a strategy to sell books.

That would be very much in keeping with the Trump family ethos: Even in the heat of the campaign, the former president is hocking all kinds of products unrelated to his political fate.

And if she does believe in abortion rights, it would hardly be that surprising.

Not only have we seen the emergence of many conservative women supporting abortion rights since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 — nearly half of Republican women support legalizing abortion nationwide — but what many might not appreciate is that this is actually a standard position for Republican first ladies. Most of them in the modern era have come out in support of abortion rights — to one extent or another, and at one point or another.

The difference is that they tended to wait until their husbands’ political careers were over to state that so directly. When they did weigh in earlier, it was often unscripted and sometimes caused problems.

Of course, the Trumps aren’t your average political family. And abortion isn’t the same political issue it was even three years ago.