The earthquake caused by the editorial advance of Melania Trump’s memoirs, released this Wednesday by The Guardian, a day later she registered a reply with the publication of a video recorded by the author and broadcast on her social network account piano, with dramatic overtones as well: “Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that we must safeguard.”
“Without a doubt, there is no room for half measures when it comes to this essential right that all women have since birth: individual freedom. What does my body, my choice, really mean?” says the former first lady, who borrows the slogan My body, my choice of the pro-abortion movement in this country.
The insistence on this defense in the final stretch of the electoral campaign has surprised everyone and everyone, taking into account that her husband, former President Donald Trump, is the main architect of the end of that right generally in the United States. Trump appointed three conservative judges in the four years he was in the White House, with the express task of overturning the sentencing precedent Roe v. Wade (1973), which imposed federal protection of abortion.
In a controversial 2022 ruling, those three justices joined a majority of six that decided to end a right that Americans had had for half a century, and returned to the States the power to legislate on the issue. Just over two years later, around twenty have banned or severely restricted it, leaving behind a chaotic map of prohibitions.
The move of Melania Trump, whose reserved public profile has been fueling the imagination of her exegetes since her husband’s emergence into politics in 2015, unleashed new speculation. Beyond the objective that governs the publication of any editorial advance – to promote the book in question and, with luck, sell many copies -, what has motivated you precisely now to capture in black on white that defense of abortion, later underlined with the video , and what consequences could the dissemination of that passage have?
The Republican presidential candidate has been contorting for months to avoid making a statement about what he will do if he returns to the White House, while Democrats accuse him of preparing a national ban on the right to abortion, an intention that he denies. To assume that airing his wife’s position could help improve the candidate’s image among women voters would be to think that Trump allows himself to be influenced by someone other than himself in his decisions.
Also, that Melania Trump, who has been absent from her husband’s political career for a long time, would be ready to lend a hand in the campaign. CNN analyst Jamal Simmons considered this Thursday that it is all due to a tactic: “Dirtying the waters about what Republicans defend regarding abortion for electoral purposes.”
According to this theory, the former first lady participates in a conservative strategy that, since the fall of Roe, has identified the issue as radioactive for them at the polls. With elections approaching, Republican candidates avoid the issue, when they do not directly try to reverse their previous positions. It happened on Tuesday, during the election debate between vice presidents, when JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, rehearsed an amendment proposal (“we must do better”), perhaps believing that no one would remember that in 2022 he defended an almost total ban on abortion .
During that face-to-face, the presidential candidate wrote in Truth: “Everyone knows that I would not support a federal ban on abortion, under any circumstances, and that, in fact, I would veto it, because it is up to the States to decide based on of the will of its voters (the will of the people!). Like Ronald Reagan before me, I fully support the three exceptions for rape, incest and [que] mother’s life [esté en peligro]”.
“Unfortunately, for Americans, Mrs. Trump’s husband strongly disagrees with her. That is the reason why more than one in three women in this country lives under Trump’s abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” Kamala Harris’ campaign said in a statement after the diffusion of the extract.
If what Melania Trump intended was to confuse her husband’s supporters, mostly evangelicals, who equate any interruption of a pregnancy with murder, the former first lady has succeeded. At least, with Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life and influential anti-abortion activist, who wrote in President Trump’s message to voters pro-life. What a waste!” In another message, Hawkins warned: What a missed opportunity to inspire a generation of young women! “I won’t buy Melania’s book.”
The only thing that is clear at the moment is that an interview on CNN will not be available to understand the author’s reasons. The chain made public this Thursday that it requested it from the publisher, Skyhorse, and that it granted it in exchange for a payment of $250,000. The television announced that it does not plan to pay that money to try to understand what has motivated Melania Trump to break her silence on abortion just over a month before the elections.
