Is Melania Trump Her Husband’s October Surprise?

The revelation of Melania Trump‘s staunch defense of a woman’s right to an abortion in her upcoming memoir could harm—or even help—her husband, former President Donald Trump, ahead of November’s presidential election, experts told Newsweek.

“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 in her book, titled Melania, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” Melania adds, according to the British newspaper, which obtained a copy of the book ahead of its publication on October 8.

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.”

Newsweek has contacted Melania Trump’s office and the Trump campaign for comment.

The former first lady has seldom aired her political views in public and has been noticeably absent from the campaign trial as her husband seeks to return for a second term in the White House.

However, the revelation that Melania’s views on abortion appear to differ significantly from her husband’s comes just weeks before the November 5 election.

Polls show a close race between Trump and the Democratic vice president Kamala Harris could be decided by small numbers of voters in crucial swing states. Abortion remains a top issue, with a survey last month by the Pew Research Center finding that half of Americans say that abortion is very important to their vote, including more than a third of Republicans.

Harris has made defending abortion rights central to her campaign and said that reproductive rights nationwide may be threatened by a second Trump presidency.

“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in an emailed statement to Newsweek.

“Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care,” Chitika added.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists and religious conservatives have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump. He has sought to present himself as more moderate on abortion amid the anger since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, despite taking credit for appointing justices who voted in 2022 to strike down the nationwide right to abortion.

Since then, 13 states have banned abortion in almost all circumstances; and 22 ban or restrict the procedure earlier than the standard set in Roe v. Wade, which allowed abortion until fetal viability, generally considered to be 23 or 24 weeks.

Trump has said that it could be a political disaster for Republicans seeking to win back key groups, including suburban women, to take extreme positions on abortion. Voters have sided with abortion rights supporters every time the issue has been directly on the ballot since Roe v. Wade was overturned, and measures to protect access to abortion will go before voters in 10 states in November, including in battlegrounds Arizona and Nevada.

This week, Trump said he would veto a national abortion ban for the first time after repeatedly declining to do so during a debate against Harris last month. He has often said that abortion law should be left to the states and expressed support for exceptions in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother.

In August, Lila Rose, the founder of the anti-abortion organization Live Action, said that Trump’s stance meant he was “losing pro-life votes” and that it was wrong for his supporters “to demand that pro-life activists be endlessly loyal to Trump in response to repeated betrayal.”

After Melania’s defense of abortion rights in her memoir was reported, Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, said it was “hard to follow the logic” of putting out the book before the election and “undercutting President Trump’s message to pro-life voters.”

Melania Trump’s defense of abortion rights is “a significant development that could have complex ramifications for Donald Trump’s campaign,” Craig Agranoff, a professor of political marketing at Florida Atlantic University, told Newsweek.

“It creates an immediate tension with Trump’s established stance on abortion, which has been strongly aligned with the pro-life movement. In an election where his ability to mobilize his base is critical, any deviation, especially from someone as close as his spouse, can appear as disunity, which might concern staunch anti-abortion voters.”

The timing of the memoir “adds a layer of unpredictability,” Agranoff said, adding that it could “provide ammunition for Trump’s opponents, who could use Melania’s stance to question his authenticity or consistency on this issue. For those looking for reasons to distrust his commitments, this moment could be a catalyst.”

Agranoff said it is possible that it could serve as an “October surprise”—an unexpected twist in the final weeks of a presidential campaign that could impact the outcome.

“But whether it’s a help or a hindrance depends on how the campaign manages to frame the conversation in the coming weeks,” Agranoff added. “A unified message from the campaign will be essential to ensure that this revelation doesn’t overshadow Trump’s efforts to shore up his base.”

Diana Mutz, a professor of political science and communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said the move could be strategic since Trump’s “strong anti-abortion stance is a political liability for him in the U.S.”

Anti-abortion voters “have nowhere to go, even if they are unhappy with it,” Mutz told Newsweek.

Agranoff agreed that it could be beneficial to Trump. “Given that Trump is struggling with certain moderate or swing voters, Melania’s more progressive stance could soften his image in their eyes,” he said.

“It could portray him as more ideologically flexible or independent-minded, depending on how the campaign chooses to spin it. This could appeal to suburban voters or women who might be on the fence about supporting him but feel alienated by more extreme positions on reproductive rights.”

Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University in New York, said he believes it is likely to help more than hurt Trump’s campaign.

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, “have struggled to overcome the Democratic narrative that they want to pass a national ban on abortion,” Reeher told Newsweek.

“Both Trump and Vance have argued that they do not want to see a national ban, and that the matter is best left to the states, where some will pass bans, and others, such a New York, will extend the right to an abortion beyond that provided by Roe v. Wade. Melania Trump’s views could be seen to bolster that position, in that she lives in a state with strong abortion rights.”

However, Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, said that Melania Trump’s views are unlikely to have much impact at all.

“I expect this revelation will have a negligible effect on the dynamics of the race,” he told Newsweek.

Panagopoulos added that there is a history of first ladies having opposing positions to their spouses. “Laura Bush supported same-sex marriage and abortion rights, while her husband held opposite views on the issues as president, and it didn’t seem to matter much,” he said.

“After all, Melania Trump is not on the ballot, and she would not be the president if Republicans win in November,” Panagopoulos said.