Melania Trump Supports All Those Abortion Rights Her Husband Took Away, Honest!
We're not falling for the banana in the tailpipe.
The former contractually obligated first lady Melania Trump has partly emerged from the shadows to pitch her upcoming memoir, creatively titled Melania. As Melania demonstrated with her eye-gouging attempts at Christmas decorations, she can’t really do anything without a certain Mistress of the Dark flair. Unfortunately, she’s nowhere near as interesting or grounded in reality as Elvira.
She’s released a trailer for the book that boasts the production values of a hostage video. She’s also reminded voters that she once posed nude. That’s hardly a scandal, considering her husband is an adjudicated rapist and a convicted felon.
She hasn’t appeared often on the campaign trail, aside from collecting $237,500 for a “speaking engagement” that was definitely not a bribe or a kickback. However, it’s probably still somewhat in her best interest if Donald Trump returns to the White House. It would at least ensure fewer accidental meetings between the two of them. So, it’s probably no coincidence that her memoir, set for release on Tuesday, reveals that Melania Trump supports abortion rights.
Here she is declaring her views with all the conviction she can muster.
“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” she proclaims. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth. What does my body, my choice really mean?”
It means very little, thanks to Donald Trump
The Guardian published excerpts from Melania Trump’s memoir where she writes, “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”
She goes on: “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
Denying women a key constitutional right is probably Donald Trump’s most enduring legacy, but nonetheless Melania Trump writes, “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”
It’s possible she’s sincere but who cares? She doesn’t have a vote on the Supreme Court. (Ronald Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor was a traditional conservative who was otherwise a reliable vote for abortion rights. However, when she retired in 2006, George W. Bush replaced her with Samuel Alito, the chief architect behind overturning Roe v. Wade.)
Melania Trump is pulling a classic Republican scam where a Republican first lady lets everyone know she’s pro-choice, even though her husband is openly anti-abortion and advances anti-abortion policies. This creates a clear model for pro-choice Republican women: Believe whatever you want — quietly, of course — but ultimately vote the same way as your spouse.
Both Laura and Barbara Bush supported abortion rights, despite their husbands nominating anti-choice Supreme Court justices. While promoting her 2010 memoir Spoken From The Heart, Laura Bush revealed that she disagreed with George W. Bush about marriage equality and abortion.
In his own memoir released the same year, W. wrote that his mother once showed him her miscarried fetus, which she kept in a jar. That apparently solidified his anti-abortion position, but no one was asking him to become a medical doctor. If only Barbara Bush had shown her son images of bullet-riddled gun shot victims, maybe he wouldn’t have let the assault weapons ban expire.
Nancy Reagan avoided the abortion issue when her husband was in office, but she later said, “I don't believe in abortion. On the other hand, I believe in a woman’s choice. That puts me somewhere in the middle.” No, that made her pro-choice, just like Barbara Bush, who wrote in her 1994 memoir, “I hate abortions, but just could not make that choice for someone else.” Despite all the Republican smears, Democrats don’t actually think abortions should be mandatory.
Melania Trump sounds like a mainstream Democrat when she writes, “It is important to note that historically, most abortions conducted during the later stages of pregnancy were the result of severe fetal abnormalities that probably would have led to the death or stillbirth of the child. Perhaps even the death of the mother. These cases were extremely rare and typically occurred after several consultations between the woman and her doctor. As a community, we should embrace these common-sense standards. Again, timing matters.”
Perhaps Melania should mention this to her husband over their next family Zoom. Maybe she could convince him to stop spreading the sick, misogynistic lie that Democrats support women executing their own children after birth. That’s both offensive and ridiculous. According to data from the CDC, more than 90 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur during the first 13 weeks of gestation and less than one percent of all abortion occur at or after 21 weeks. After the Dobbs decision, Republicans passed abortion bans at six weeks, when many people don’t even know they’re pregnant.
When a Republican politician’s spouse expresses moderate views, especially on abortion, the target audience is usually white suburban women. This is a classic banana in the tailpipe, but white ladies (not the most reliable Democratic-voting group) too often fall for it. It’s interesting, also, to place this in context of the backlash against Hillary Clinton when her husband first ran for president. She was seen as more liberal than her husband (and she probably was on most issues aside from sex with interns), but that was considered a political liability.
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are metaphorically the pro-choice companions for the entire Republican party. They willingly caucus with a GOP that steadily rolled back abortion rights throughout their Senate careers.
Collins voted to confirm both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. She even voted to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, which made it easier for Mitch McConnell to pack the high court with obvious far-right extremists. She didn’t vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, for transparently political reasons (she was facing a tough re-election). She never reliably fought for abortion rights, and she ignored the pro-choice groups that warned her about Kavanaugh.
She later claimed that Kavanaugh “misled” her during private conversations where he said he was a “don’t-rock-the-boat kind of judge.” Collins apparently didn’t read between the lines, considering Kavanaugh was joining a “boat” that was already solidly conservative. He’d prove more disruptive as an actual swing vote, especially on abortion. Instead, he’s gone along with the Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas’s group think.
White women are the nation’s largest voting electorate. Married white women are the most reliably Republican, which explains (though never justifies) JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comments. After the 2022 midterms, Jesse Watters said, “We need these ladies to get married. It’s time to fall in love and just settle down. Guys, go put a ring on it.”
Single white women are seen as uncontrollable, while married white women might hold less extreme positions but they don’t act upon them. There’s a reason the more politically active Republican spouses are full-blown MAGA like Ginny Thomas and Martha-Ann Alito. Melania Trump might’ve copy and pasted some pro-choice boilerplate in her memoir, but it’s ultimately meaningless. She writes, “Occasional political disagreements between me and my husband … [are] part of our relationship, but I believed in addressing them privately rather than publicly challenging him.”
Once reminded of her existence, Donald Trump didn’t seem to mind Melania’s robotic defense of abortion rights.
“We spoke about it,” he told Fox News while cosplaying the role of considerate spouse. “And I said: ‘You have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell what you to do. You have to write what you believe.’”
Of course, Melania Trump assumes we’re interested in her political views now, when her husband could possibly return to the White House and further restrict reproductive rights. She claims there’s “no room for compromise” but that would mean not voting for the anti-abortion candidate. Instead, she’s not just compromising. She’s surrendering, and that’s what the GOP hopes pro-choice Republican women will do on Election Day.
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Melania Trump doesn’t give a flyin’ fook about abortion. The timing of the drop of this tome screams “Donnie has gone too far again, as usual, so let’s trot out the little lady to have a differing ‘opinion’ to try to mitigate some of the political damage the GOP has created for themselves.” Yet another futile and stupid gesture, signifying nothing. sorry for mixing National Lampoon and Shakespeare together.
Babs Bush had a stillborn fetus in a jar?! How long did she keep it? Did it pass down to a family member in her will? This is going to haunt me for days!