Former first lady Melania Trump has a new autobiography, simply titled “Melania,” due to be released later this year. Yet it’s already making headlines, as a copy acquired by the Guardian revealed that Melania is a “passionate” supporter of abortion.
In their article, the Guardian announced that Mrs. Trump had written about how she believes the killing of preborn human beings should remain legal and is vital for women to be able to access — a departure from the position her husband, President Donald Trump, has previously claimed to hold. She wrote (emphases added):
“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.
Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.
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.
She further doubled down on this take with a video published to X promoting the new book.
“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” she said. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right, that all women possess from birth: individual freedom. What does my ‘my body, my choice’ really mean?”
https://t.co/ZCTwZSqZND pic.twitter.com/Y9MT3uj97b
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) October 3, 2024
While this belief that a woman’s so-called “bodily autonomy” trumps all else is certainly common, unfortunately, it is also extremely wrong, and falls apart under closer examination — and especially in light of the evidence of what abortion is and what it does.
Here are some things we hope Mrs. Trump and others who agree with her will consider:
1. Bodily autonomy is not unlimited, and doesn’t permit us to harm the innocent.
Mrs. Trump repeatedly talked about a woman’s “right to control her own body.” But there are a couple of problems with this.
First, all laws tell us what we can or cannot do with our bodies — including some that only involve matters of personal safety, like seat belt laws, for instance. But many laws exist to deter people from doing violence to other innocent human beings. Abortion is a violent act that intentionally kills another human being; therefore, the “bodily autonomy” argument in this case fails to consider the intentional destruction of the life of another innocent human being.
If abortion did not end the life of another human being, there would be no “pro-life” movement at all; what pro-lifers seek is equal protection for the lives of all members of the human family — even the ones still growing in their mothers’ wombs.
Aside from the fact that laws already tell us what we can and cannot do with our bodies, a preborn baby is not simply part of her mother’s body. A preborn child is a distinct, individual, living and growing human being who is temporarily residing within the woman’s uterus — and in the vast majority of cases, that child is there as a result of a voluntary act by her parents.
At the moment of fertilization, a preborn child is already biologically separate from her mother. Her ethnicity, hair color, sex, eye color, and other traits have already been decided. Her DNA is unique from her parents’ DNA. In just three weeks, her heart is beating — and it isn’t a meaningless electrical throbbing or a manufactured sound created to control women, as abortion advocates like to claim. At three weeks post-fertilization, the heart is pumping blood throughout her body. This is a well-known fact found regularly in scientific literature. Without a beating heart, her body would not continue to grow and thrive through the rest of pregnancy.
As Kirsten Watson, wife of NFL star Benjamin Watson, explained in a Live Action “Pro-Life Replies” video that a preborn child’s body is not part of the mother’s body. Watson, who was pregnant with twins at the time of filming, said, “It’s not just MY body here. There are three bodies. Some people try to say that ‘children in the womb are part of the woman’s body’ – but come on. If a child in the womb were literally part of a woman’s body, like her arm or leg, then I would have three hearts, three brains, thirty fingers — and because there are two boys in there, I’d be mostly male.”
2. Those who support abortion should educate themselves on what it truly is.
Many people support abortion without knowing what truly happens in the abortion process. Abortion is typically referred to as a simple, easy procedure, rather than the violent act of killing it really is.
When people are educated on what actually takes place during an abortion, their minds very often change.
The man in the video below made a similar argument to that of Mrs. Trump — that “the government” should not infring upon a woman’s bodily autonomy. A few minutes later, new information he received led to a change of mind:
Live Action has released two sets of videos describing what happens during an abortion; the first featured former abortionist Anthony Levatino, who estimates he committed nearly 1,200 abortions before becoming pro-life. The second series is narrated by other abortionists who became pro-life: Drs. Kathi Aultman, Beverly McMillan, Noreen Johnson, and Patti Giebink. The videos use animation to describe what happens during four different procedures: first-trimester suction abortion (also known as vacuum aspiration or dilation and curettage/D&C), second-trimester dilation and evacuation (D&E), induction abortion, and the abortion pill method.
These videos are known to change viewers’ minds. In screenings shown to focus groups of over 3,000 self-identified pro-choice viewers, 51% said they viewed abortion more negatively after watching a “What is Abortion?” video. The number of people who said abortion should never be legal nearly doubled after watching the video from the number who chose that option before.
WARNING: Images below may be disturbing.
As one woman who watched the videos said:
It’s really sad! The baby, like, is definitely pretty developed. Like there’s no — that’s really sad. It’s so, like — they just rip it apart! … I feel like as soon as, like, the baby, like, is conceived, like, the embryo, like, it’s alive, and that’s sad. I didn’t know, like, that much about it, you know?
Abortion doesn’t just remove a meaningless clump of cells from a woman’s body. It takes the life of a human being. Photos of the victims of abortion make this very clear.
Baby Angel was found in a medical waste bin. Experts believe he was possibly exsanguinated and dismembered alive.
Baby Holly was dismembered by a D&E abortion in a Washington DC abortion facility. Photo courtesy of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.
The arm of a baby killed by a D&C abortion. Photo courtesy of prolifesociety.com
Photo: Reddit user brazen 177 (10-week aborted baby by abortion pill)
Reddit user BackgroundPea7785’s photo of aborted baby at 9 weeks gestation (enlarged).
3. Many women have believed the lie that they must kill their babies to survive.
It’s worth noting that Melania Trump previously worked as a model, and the entertainment industry is well-known for its support of abortion. There is a disturbing history of female entertainers, musicians, actresses, and models feeling pressured or coerced to abort their children for the sake of their careers — and this might help to explain the virtual lockstep of celebrity support for abortion. Women in entertainment have come to view abortion as crucial for their own survival in industries that see motherhood and pregnancy as detrimental to the female image.
While we do not know at this time whether Mrs. Trump herself ever had an abortion, that atmosphere may have influenced her views on the subject.
Women were regularly sexually assaulted by male executives in Hollywood, and if they became pregnant — whether through rape or consensual sex — they were told that abortion was what they must do. “Morality clauses” were written into actresses’ contracts during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” At that time, a woman wasn’t allowed to become pregnant, and was even forbidden from getting married. Even women who were married — like Ava Gardner to Frank Sinatra — were coerced to have abortions if they wanted to keep working.
After all, the studio heads reasoned, women couldn’t be marketed as bombshells if they were also wives and mothers.
“MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies,” Gardner is quoted as saying. “If I had one, my salary would be cut off. So how could I make a living? Frank was broke and my future movies were going to take me all over the world. I couldn’t have a baby with that sort of thing going on. MGM made all the arrangements for me to fly to London. Someone from the studio was with me all the time. The abortion was hush hush… very discreet.”
Judy Garland is a tragic example of a starlet forced into an abortion against her will. Garland got pregnant after marrying composer David Rose and wanted to keep her child, but everyone in her life — her mother, her husband, and MGM studio executives — thought the pregnancy would cost them too much money. Garland wrote about the experience, referring to herself in the third person:
She asked her mother, “Where are we going?”
“Never mind,” she said, “you’ll see.”
They drove for about a half hour and pulled up in front of a dreary little establishment outside of town. Her mother took Judy by the hand, led her inside to a shabby little office. In a few minutes, David, her mother and MGM were satisfied.
Today, women in Hollywood are still being coerced into abortions by powerful men.
This is hopefully something that Melania Trump never experienced herself. But this mindset — that women can’t be successful while also being mothers — is still pervasive, both in Hollywood and elsewhere. The notion that a woman must kill her own children to be successful is not feminist or empowering. And there is no such thing as a fundamental right to liberty which demands you encroach on someone else’s fundamental rights… in this case, the most fundamental right of all: the right to life.
Ultimately, even though Melania Trump has held a pro-abortion view for her “entire adult life,” she can change. She can learn the truth and consider the brutal and tragic reality of abortion upon children, upon their mothers and fathers, upon society as a whole — and upon humanity.
Deliberately killing innocent human beings (our own sons and daughters) can never help us to become better people with brighter futures. We not only destroy the future of other human beings when we accept this atrocity; we warp our own souls.
