New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia may have gotten off to a rocky start on her first day behind the lectern.
But one facet of her personal story has found legions of fans in anti-abortion circles since President Donald Trump announced her appointment.
Zacharia, who is an anti-abortion activist, made a startling revelation during an interview on the podcast “We the People with Gates Garcia” in June 2025, saying she was “20, 30 minutes away from being aborted."
Zacharia, a board member at the White Rose Resistance, a Christian anti-abortion group, described the series of events that eventually led to her adoption as a “miracle.”
"Wonderful story! I hope every young man and woman who is considering an abortion hears this kind of testimony,"
wrote one Instagram commenter. "Pregnancy is a journey; there is a very real person when the destination is reached."
"She going to do great despite being a bit nervous on her first day," wrote another after Zacharia's debut on Oct. 13. "If I was in a den of vipers like she was today, I'd be nervous too. I'm so happy she was born."
In Zacharia's telling, her biological mother, Ruth, a 19-year-old single woman who had been “kind of a groupie” for the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, was pregnant in 1983 and unsure what to do.
As a victim of sexual abuse who had no support from either her family nor the man who impregnated her, she was prepared to resort to abortion, Zacharia said.
“The first phone call she gets as she's leaving is from my biological father who's like, ‘Get an abortion. I'll do whatever it takes,'” Zacharia said. “She says ‘okay,' hangs up.”
As she was almost ready to leave, the phone rang again.
This time, it was a Christian counselor.
Zacharia described her biological mother as a victim of sexual abuse who had no support from either her family nor the man who impregnated her.
Zacharia said the counselor talked to her mother about how “painful” abortion could be for women with the “loss of their baby and the ensuing psychological, physical, physiological trauma.”
Zacharia said that by the end of the call, her mother had agreed to an “open adoption,” which enables the biological parent to have contact with the adoptive parents.
“I know where I get my rebellious spirit,” Zacharia said about her biological mother telling her aunt, who was waiting to take her to the clinic, that she was not getting an abortion.
"And of course, to the anger and dismay of her family, she goes forward with the pregnancy and chooses life,” she said.
Zacharia, 42, who met her biological mother at 18, said the story is what made the issue of abortion “near and dear” to her.
But her activism has also come with controversy and backlash.
Last November, Zacharia posted claims on X that the abortion pill mifepristone is “connected to the manufacturer of the deadly gas Zyklon B, used in the World War II concentration camps.” The post elicited a response from the official X account of the Auschwitz Memorial, which said Zacharia’s post “distorts historical facts.”
“The individual elements in the argument are arranged to create the impression of a direct connection where none existed” and a “misleading chain of guilt by association,” the organization dedicated to commemorating the history of the Nazi concentration camp wrote.
Abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All released a statement soon after Zacharia’s appointment as White House press secretary, describing her as a conspiracy theorist.
“Donald Trump is handing the anti-abortion disinformation movement one of the biggest megaphones in government,” said Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju. “Katie Zacharia is the latest anti-abortion extremist Trump has installed in his administration.”
Zacharia's first day in front of the podium lasted all of 14 minutes, and she spent the majority of it reading from a binder, her delivery marked by a few verbal stumbles. After having described herself as a lawyer, her professional background was called into question after it became public that she had not passed the bar exam in any state.
Trump, however, gave her a glowing review.
"I thought she was very good," he said.
Zacharia, a mother of four, told Gates Garcia that serving on the board of the White Rose Resistance was a "blessing and a gift.” The nonprofit was founded in June 2022 by activist Seth Gruber after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“We're talking seconds, seconds of a phone call that really spared my life and saved my life,” Zacharia said. "The story really is one of a miracle."
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New White House press secretary has many fans in anti-abortion circles
