Melania Trump Comes Out In Favor of Abortion; Trump Voters Utterly Perplexed

Black Sheep is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I am, and have always been, pro-life.

While my prior religious convictions informed this position, it’s one I still hold even from the standpoint of religious doubt.

As I indicated in a piece I first wrote over a decade ago, entitled, “It’s Time to Demand Intellectual Honesty About Abortion,” this is a science-based issue above all else:

As the hardened hearts and sin-dimmed intellects of so many in our civilization — which, through endless indulgence and brutality, now lies gasping on death’s doorstep — continue to find ways to justify, defend, and obfuscate what abortion is and what it does, we must press the case. We must continue to push forward with the truth. It is an interesting data point that many who have no ethical problem with abortion eschew religion, and instead worship at the altar of science.

But science is on our side.

As medical technology advances, we become every year more aware of the full humanity of the child in utero. We see in the ultrasound scan of her face the features of her mother, we notice the fine details in his tiny fingers and toes, we recognize the response to external stimuli, we are confronted with the inexorable reality that these are children, not “choices.”

It is for those who advocate their dismemberment and disposal to explain away these horrors. It is for them to be confronted with the science of embryology and fetal development and be forced to admit: “Yes, we know that abortion is the taking of a human life, and we are willing to stand by it.” Abortion proponents stand shoulder to shoulder not just with Margaret Sanger and George Bernard Shaw, but Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, and their more modern progeny. Estimates are that Communism and Nazism alone are responsible for the death of over 100 million people in the 20th century.

But since 1980, the global abortion toll is over ONE BILLION LIVES.

It is completely perplexing why, with a critical presidential election a month away, and a great many Trump supporters holding ardently pro-life views, Melania Trump would publish a memoir in which she unequivocally gives voice to her support for abortion.

The Guardian obtained an advance copy of her eponymous book, Melania, in which she is reported to expresses views on abortion which “baffle both sides”:

“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,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign in which Donald Trump’s threats to women’s reproductive rights have played a central role.

“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.”

This week, she doubled-down on those comments, releasing a video on her X page reiterating that “there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right which all women possess from birth: individual freedom.” She goes on to ask, rhetorically, “What does ‘My Body, My Choice’ really mean?”

Trump himself has courted controversy with pro-lifers this year, announcing that he “would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters.”

While I tend to agree that a federal ban is unworkable for legal and political reasons at this point in time, I understand the concern from pro-lifers about this seemingly significant change from the man most responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.

On X/Twitter, reactions seem to be a mixture of surprise, alarm, and bewilderment.

(Click the image to go to the original tweet)

Dana Loesch:

Jesse Kelly:

Molly Hemingway:

Allie Beth Stuckey:

And here’s Trump on what he thinks:

Black Sheep is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I still believe, for a number of significant reasons, that it’s critically important for Trump to win this election — or we may never have another real election in this country at all.

But this is not reassuring. You hate to see it. When it comes to such an absolutely fundamental issue, it’s hard not to feel like we’ll always be on our own.