FFormer First Lady Melania Trump has been noticeably absent from her husband’s 2024 presidential election campaign. Yet in a recent interview to promote his upcoming memoir, MelanieTrump made an explosive revelation on one of the most controversial issues of this election: abortion. “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does to her own body? » asked the former First Lady.

Not since the 1970s has the wife of the Republican presidential candidate adopted such a clear position in favor of the right to abortion during a campaign. This stands in stark contrast to Trump’s silence on the issue throughout his tenure as First Lady. Likewise, it sets her apart from a long line of GOP first ladies who have quietly disagreed with their husbands on abortion, hoping to avoid jeopardizing the religious right’s support for the party.

Why has the otherwise silent Trump decided to speak out on this issue now? The state of the GOP may well have pushed her to do so. We’ve known this since the 1970s, the last time a Republican first lady – Betty Ford – spoke out openly in support of women’s rights. Then as now, the Republican Party was undergoing an ideological reconfiguration, which was widening the gender gap. This allowed the First Lady to speak out on abortion without fear of hurting her husband’s chances in November. So Trump’s comments tell us as much about the state of the Republican Party as they do about abortion.

By the 1970s, the battle for the soul of the Republican Party had been going on for several decades. Conservatives had spent years building a movement to oppose mainstream moderate Republicanism, most associated with President Dwight Eisenhower and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Throughout the 1960s, emerging conservatives, notably Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, challenged the party’s orthodoxy.

With the collapse of the Nixon administration after Watergate and new President Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon his predecessor, the Republican Party found itself in crisis. Ford had to contend with Republican leaders in the South and West who were pushing the party to the right as it attempted to climb out of the national spiritual nadir. Women within the party have also been engaged in a bitter battle, with conservative activists like Phylis Schlafly coming to the forefront and demanding that the party abandon its historic support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA ), legal abortion and other feminist goals – and instead becomes the party of traditional conservative family values. The new First Lady, Betty Ford, was squarely on the opposite side of this debate.

Learn more: Melania Trump shares her views on abortion in new interview and Donald’s reaction

As the Republican Party underwent this fundamental identity crisis, abortion emerged as a central issue dividing the party.

It was in this context that in August 1975 Betty Ford spoke with 60 minutes correspondent Morley Safer. He observed that abortion was “kind of a taboo subject for the president’s wife.” Despite this, Safer wanted to know what Ford thought of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe deer v. Wadewhich ruled that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to have an abortion in certain circumstances. Ford rejected the idea that first ladies should not tackle the difficult issue, instead noting that she was “very convinced that it was the best thing in the world when the Supreme Court voted to the legalization of abortion.

Knowing that the response would infuriate the Republican Party’s rising right, the Ford administration attempted to distinguish the First Lady’s views from those of the president and the Republican Party by noting that they were her personal opinion. President Ford admitted to reporters after the interview aired that he expected to lose millions of votes because of his wife’s comments, but he largely tried to remain neutral. The First Lady’s comments sparked a backlash, with former Mormon Gordon B. Hinckley, for example, condemning the interview in a statement. CBS Broadcast as part of a broader “deterioration of global morality.”

The First Lady, however, was not interested in giving ground. She had a very different view of the GOP. She wanted to see ratification of the ERA and protection of the right to abortion. Mrs. Ford was not alone in this regard. She had the support of a cohort of Republican feminists, including RNC co-chair Mary Dent Crisp.

Yet the party’s tectonic plates were already shifting. Betty Ford’s bipartisan feminism was already becoming increasingly out of fashion. Republican feminists felt power slipping from their grasp when Ronald Reagan contested the Republican nomination in 1976. In 1980, when Reagan took control of the Republican Party, Crisp was ousted from her position and ended up running John Anderson’s independent presidential campaign.

Betty Ford continued to advocate for women’s equality even after her husband’s defeat in 1976, but her moderate Republicanism declined as the 1970s progressed. Reagan’s ascendancy solidified the Republican Party’s shift to the right. Abortion remained at the forefront as a political issue – and not just a women’s issue – as the Reagan Revolution reshaped the American political landscape.

In 1980, for the first time in 40 years, the Republican Party dropped its support for the ERA from its platform. The battle to ratify the Amendment failed, even after Congress extended the deadline until 1982. As moderates left the party, Reagan courted the newly organized Christian right, and First Lady Nancy Reagan followed suit. .

The new First Lady personally opposed abortion but quietly supported women’s rights to make their own choices. Yet Mrs. Reagan refused to make this statement publicly, knowing that such a stance would anger her husband’s evangelical supporters. In 1984, when a Los Angeles Times Asked by a reporter about the exceptions allowing abortion in cases of rape, Nancy Reagan replied: “I don’t know. » This response forced her collaborators to clarify that the First Lady “had no obligation to further explain her position, because she is not an elected official nor a candidate for a position”. It wasn’t until 1994 – years after her husband left the White House – that she made her personal opinion on the matter known.

Learn more: Roe v. Wade Lawyer “surprised” that Americans are still fighting against abortion

Reagan’s successor, Barbara Bush, also hid her stance in favor of abortion rights during her husband’s presidency. When pressed on the issue during the 1992 re-election campaign, she dodged, instead stating that abortion was a personal choice and that the issue should not be in the party platform “neither for nor against “. His statement shocked activists on both sides of the issue. Pro-abortion rights activists denounced it as a deliberate move to keep liberal voters from leaving the Republican Party, while conservatives tried to downplay Mrs. Bush’s position, fearing it would cost votes. right to her husband.

Bush’s daughter-in-law, Laura Bush, has publicly stated that she does not believe the Roe deer That decision should have been reversed in an interview the day before her own husband’s inauguration in 2001, but she largely refrained from discussing abortion because “I’m not running.” The husbands of all three women have maintained strong anti-abortion positions and promoted anti-abortion policies.

The silence of the three Republican first ladies stemmed from the Republican Party’s alliance with the Christian right, which left them little space to support abortion access as loudly as Betty Ford did. Moreover, with Roe deer protect these rights, it might have been easier to justify not speaking so loudly.

Melania Trump also said nothing about abortion rights during her husband’s presidency. But in 2022, the Supreme Court reshaped the debate over women’s reproductive health by overturning Roe v. Wade In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health…a direct consequence of the appointments made by Trump’s husband. The decision eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and hurt the Republican Party in the 2022 midterm elections. Donald Trump has worked to blur his position on the issue, even claiming he would veto a national ban on abortion.

This changing climate in the Republican Party has created space for Melania Trump’s voice to be heard on abortion. Just as the party underwent a period of demographic reconfiguration in the 1970s, the current GOP finds itself at a pivotal moment where it is transitioning from the Republican Party that existed from the 1980s to the 2020s – a party of traditional conservatism and values morals – to the GOP. of Donald Trump the individual.

Melania’s speaking out may well be an attempt to sway undecided voters who are not social conservatives but who remain unconvinced by the Democratic establishment and open to a potentially vaguely ideologically defined Trumpism. It is also an attempt to win women’s votes at a time when, after Dobbsthe gender gap is wider than ever. His stance on abortion reminds voters that not only will reproductive rights be on the agenda on the November ballot, but so will the future of the Republican Party itself.

Elizabeth Rees is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her doctoral research, carried out at the University of Oxford, focuses on the development of the staff of the East Wing and the Office of the First Lady in the mid-20th century.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the TIME editors.