Strategic ambiguity:

Los Angeles, California – Restricting abortion has long been a cornerstone of the Republican Party.

But two revelations at the start of October signalled just how far the party's stance has shifted under former United States President Donald Trump.

On October 1, Trump pledged for the first time to veto a federal abortion ban, if re-elected in November's presidential race. Then, two days later, his wife Melania Trump declared her support for abortion rights.

It was a stunning about-face for Trump who, just one year prior, told supporters he was “proud to be the most pro-life president in American history”.

But experts say Trump's mixed messages are part of a wider campaign strategy, to appeal to both sides of the polarising issue.

Trump is facing a tight race in November, and surveys indicate he is struggling to rally female voters. A September poll from ABC News and the research firm Ipsos found that the Republican trailed his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, by nearly 13 points among women.

The same poll showed more voters trusted Harris to handle the topic of abortion than Trump.

With reproductive rights seen as an Achilles heel for Trump and the Republican Party at large, analysts say Trump's ever-shifting stance on abortion could be an effort to muddy the waters — and win back some voters in the process.

But it could also backfire, alienating certain stalwart Republican voters.

“By trying to appeal to everyone, he may risk appealing to no one,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law. “That's the high-wire act he's trying to do.”

Trump’s strategic ambiguity is no new phenomenon, though. The former president has long been a chameleon on the subject of reproductive rights — and in politics as a whole.

He went through a phase, for instance, when he publicly identified with the Democratic Party. Around that period, in 1999, he told the TV show Meet the Press, “I’m very pro-choice.”

But by the time he made his first successful presidential bid in 2016, Trump was firmly Republican — and firmly against abortion access.

“I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges,” Trump said during the final presidential debate of 2016.

He ultimately followed through with that pledge, appointing three justices to the Supreme Court during his term in office. He has since taken credit for the court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the case that had previously upheld a constitutional right to abortion access.

As he sought re-election in 2024, Trump repeatedly framed the overturning of Roe v Wade as an accomplishment no other Republican could claim.

“For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated. And I did it,” he told a Fox News town hall in January. “And I’m proud to have done it.”

But that decision has allowed states to pass restrictive abortion bans that prevented some women from accessing life-saving reproductive healthcare, leading to their deaths.

By the time July arrived, the Trump campaign was ready to roll out a new approach to abortion.

Under Trump’s influence, the Republican Party dropped its long-held support for a national abortion ban from its official platform. That marked a rupture with decades of tradition: Every Republican platform since 1984 had included a reference to the ban.

But Ziegler, of the University of California, pointed out that the platform nevertheless contained a coded reference to the idea of foetal personhood: In a short section about abortion, the platform argues that the Constitution says “no person can be denied life”.

Ziegler explained that the platform is trying to have it both ways, by appeasing advocates for and against abortion access.

“That's typical of what Trump's been trying to do at this point in history, which is to say, ‘We're going to take out the thing that's the obvious reference that the anti-abortion movement wants, and that will appeal to swing voters. And then we're going to keep in a coded reference to foetal personhood to keep the base happy,’” Ziegler said.

That ambiguity, she added, leaves “the door open to do effectively whatever Trump wants when he's in office”.

Trump has continued to make the case on the campaign trail that he would be “great for women and their reproductive rights”, despite evidence to the contrary.

His running mate JD Vance, for instance, is an outspoken abortion opponent. His campaign has also sought to reassure conservative voters of his “strong pro-life policies”.

Trump knows that abortion is a liability for him, Ziegler explained. But he nevertheless needs to energise pro-abortion rights voters — largely on the Christian right — without alienating voters who support abortion access.

The Republican candidate has also had to adapt to a mid-election switch-up that has thrown his stance on women's healthcare into sharp relief.

For much of his campaign, Trump had anticipated facing President Joe Biden at the ballot box. But in July, concerns about Biden’s age forced the Democrat from the race, in a surprise election-season twist.

Harris, the vice president, took his place as the Democratic nominee. If elected in November, she would become the first woman to win the presidency in the US.

She has also made abortion access a keystone of her presidential bid. One of her campaign advertisements highlights the story of Amber Nicole Thurman, a woman who died after being denied abortion care in her home state of Georgia.

Ziegler argues Harris’s intimate ability to champion abortion rights has put Trump in an awkward position.

“He thought he was running against Biden, and he never needed to worry about any of this stuff. And it turned out he did,” Ziegler said. “Harris has been able to press him much more and turn the abortion issue into more of a liability, which is one of the many reasons the race is so close now.”

Wendy Hansen, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico, said Harris’s entry into the race is a “big reason” Trump had to switch gears.

“Biden was uncomfortable talking about the issue,” Hansen said. “It's not something that he was being very vocal about — as Harris has. So that probably did have an effect on Trump backpedalling, because he has a woman who's out there being very vocal about women having the right to choose.”

Experts say it is not likely Trump’s shifting position will prompt abortion opponents to defect to Harris’s camp.

But, they warn, there is a real risk that some could stay home on election day, rather than support Trump.

For instance, one prominent anti-abortion rights activist, Lila Rose, has urged her followers on social media to not vote for Trump unless he takes a harder stance on abortion. Rose’s Facebook page alone reaches more than 1.1 million followers.

“This is going to be a very close election, and so if even a small percentage of those base voters do stay home, it could be a big deal,” said Ziegler.

“There is a subset of folks in the Republican Party who are primarily socially conservative, and there's going to be some fraction of those people who are actually upset. ​​I don't expect that to be most people, but it could be significant, even if it's a small number.”

It’s also unclear how swing voters will respond to Trump’s abortion mixed messages.

An August poll from The New York Times and Siena College found that, in seven battleground states, a “growing share” of voters identified abortion as their top election issue.

But Hansen at the University of New Mexico pointed out that other issues still outrank abortion in many swing states.

“I don't think it's unimportant. It's just really hard to gauge how important it will be,” Hansen explained.

“Unless you're directly impacted by the overturn of Roe v Wade, you're more likely to make your decision on other dimensions. And the economy is a big one this year.”

Nevertheless, research by PhD candidate Layla Brooks at Emory University found that abortion can be a powerful incentive for women to go to the polls.

Brooks analysed data from the 2022 midterms and found that women vote in higher numbers when abortion is a major election issue — for example, when an abortion-related measure is on the ballot.

“The results I have so far show that women did turn out to vote more in states where abortion policy was coded as highly important,” she told Al Jazeera.

Brooks personally hopes that the backsliding on abortion rights will motivate more women to vote.

“I would hope that this would mobilise them, that this would include how they're participating in many different forms, including turning out to vote,” she said.