Former President Donald Trump has broken his silence on his wife Melania Trump’s recent revelation that she is pro-choice.
“We spoke about it, and I said, ‘you have to write what you believe,’” Trump told Fox News in an interview on Thursday. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. You have to write what you believe. She’s very beloved. People love our former first lady, I can tell you that.”
“I said, you have to stick with your heart. I tell that to everybody,” Trump added.
Melania came out as pro-choice in excerpts from her upcoming memoir published by The Guardian.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” the former first lady asks in a passage that echoes the Democratic Party’s platform on abortion access.
In another segment Melania argues that women have a “natural right to make decisions about her own body and health.”
Trump, who frequently takes credit for appointing the right-wing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and ended nationwide access to abortion, frequently hails the end of the landmark court decision for throwing the issue back to state legislatures.
During the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, Trump said in an all-caps post on his Truth Social app that he would veto a national abortion ban if one was passed by a Republican Congress.
Trump also recently came out against a Florida ballot initiative that would overturn the state’s six-week ban. Melania has not directly said how she was planning to vote on the ballot initiative.
