RFK Wins Praise From Pro-Life Senators On Capitol Hill

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in Washington, D.C., this week meeting with senators ahead of his confirmation hearings. He has his work cut out for him, given media hysteria over his views on vaccinations, “Big Food,” and “Big Pharma.” But he’s also facing questions on abortion.

Kennedy has drawn criticism from both sides of the aisle over his past comments on abortion. It’s a topic that the GOP once embraced but now aggressively shies away from, while most of the Democratic Party advocates for abortion on demand, and without apology. Kennedy’s past remarks have caused some to question whether he would pro-actively enact pro-life policy as head of the Department of Health and Human Services — the way Donald Trump’s previous administration did.

But pro-life Republican senators are emerging from their meetings with Kennedy confident that he will enact Trump’s pro-life agenda.

“The Trump administration was a fearless champion of the unborn during his first term,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told The Daily Wire on Tuesday morning, ahead of his meeting with Kennedy. “Health and Human Services is at the center of the national conversation about the value of each child. I look forward to meeting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to talk about his vision for how HHS will continue the first Trump Administration’s policies on life.”

And Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who met with Kennedy on Monday, said in a Tuesday interview with The Daily Wire that he addressed his concerns head on: “I said, ‘Where’s your position? I just gotta know, because you’ve been all over the map on it.”

Kennedy responded, according to Mullin, “I think there’s too many abortions in the world, let’s just start there. It’s not that I don’t value life, I value life, I just look at it a little bit different in certain circumstances, what we’ve been through as a family.”

.@SenMullin shares how yesterday, he discussed his concerns on abortion with RFK Jr. during an interview with @realDailyWire: “I said, ‘Where’s your position? I just gotta know, because you’ve been all over the map on it.'” pic.twitter.com/tjPR4aqnwc

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) December 17, 2024

“Where does that put you when it comes to pro-life?” Mullin questioned Kennedy. “He goes: ‘I’m serving at the will of the President of the United States, and it’s his policies that I will put forth. And so we may not agree on every single issue, but we agree 100%, we shouldn’t even be having abortions in this world anyways. But my policies are not what I’m pushing forward, it’s the president’s, and I think the country knows where the president is on that, and so therefore, that’s my position.”

“I’m good with that,” Mullin told The Daily Wire. “If he’s willing to say that, I have no problems with him becoming Secretary of HHS. And I will support him completely, even as passionate and as pro-life as my wife and my family and I are, I believe Bobby is still the right person for this position.”

Most significantly, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri released an X thread on Tuesday evening revealing that Kennedy promised to reinstate Trump’s pro-life policies at HHS, including reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which blocks federal funds from going to NGOs that promote abortion; ending taxpayer funding for abortions domestically; and reinstating the bar on Title X funds going to organizations that promote abortion.

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Kennedy also reportedly promised Hawley that “all of his deputies at HHS would be pro-life” and that he would “reinstate conscience protections for healthcare providers”— two major points of concern for pro-lifers who spoke with The Daily Wire.

“He told me he believes there are far too many abortions in the US and that we cannot be the moral leader of the free world with abortion rates so high,” Hawley said.

Kennedy’s Background On Abortion

Kennedy has made a variety of high-profile statements on abortion. He said in 2023 that he would sign a federal ban on abortion, protecting unborn babies after 12 weeks. But his campaign quickly backtracked on that point, telling POLITICO that his “position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose” and “he does not support legislation banning abortion.”

In May, during an appearance on Sage Steele’s podcast, he argued on abortion: “I wouldn’t leave it to the states … we should leave it to the woman, we shouldn’t have government involved.”

“Even if [the baby] is full term?” questioned Steele. After a slight pause, he responded: “Even if it is full term” — a response that drew heavy backlash from the Right.

In June 2024, he said he saw “emerging consensus” on abortion, arguing “that abortion should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter,” and pointing out that most Americans agree that there should be restrictions on abortions at some point. He also said that “every abortion is a tragedy,” and highlighted his ‘More Choices, More Life‘ policy, which does echo, in part, the voices of pro-life advocates and activists who argue that mothers deserve more options than merely abortion, and who call for Americans to support pregnancy resource centers that assist mothers and babies in need.

But in recent days, Kennedy has repeatedly told senators he would abide by Trump’s pro-life policies.

“RFK Jr. was very clear, President Trump is pro-life, and he’s gonna have this as a pro-life HHS,” Lankford said Tuesday after meeting with Kennedy.

“We talked about abortion,” said Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) on Tuesday, “And the big thing about abortion is, he’s telling everybody, he said listen, whatever President Trump, I’m going to back him 100%. Of course, President Trump is for three exceptions, we’ve all heard that.”

Team Trump is also confident that Kennedy will stand by the president when it comes to abortion. Transition spokeswoman Katie Miller told The Daily Wire on Tuesday that RFK “has every intention of supporting President Trump’s agenda to the fullest extent.”

(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

RFK Jr. And A ‘Pro-Life’ HHS

Some on the Right are adamantly against Kennedy’s appointment, arguing that he has failed to prove his dedication to protecting the unborn.

“The position he held for most of his campaign was far out of step with public opinion, but even his modified view is to the left of the median voter,” argues Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of National Review. “A majority of Americans believe abortion should be illegal to perform in the second trimester of pregnancy, and about 80 percent think it should be illegal in the last trimester.”

Ponnuru points out that HHS is the largest department of the federal government, noting that “many issues related to the right to life run through it — including conscience protections for medical workers who oppose abortion, research on human embryos and fetuses, and federal health-care programs that include restrictions on funding abortion that Democrats have been trying to eliminate.”

“Kennedy has made no public commitments on any of these issues,” he writes.

Brian Burch, the president of Catholic Vote, agreed that Kennedy has made statements that have “justifiably” concerned pro-lifers. But he argued that Kennedy is a “very thinking and careful public figure” who is currently working through the question of abortion — “and how to reconcile that with his other beliefs around the ways in which the human person has been commoditized by Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Tech.”

“He’s publicly now said that he opposes late term abortion, he recognizes there is not a public consensus around how and where to regulate abortion, and he would like to work in innovative ways to reduce the number of abortions and helping women to choose life,” Burch explained. “He’s said that publicly, he’s said that to me personally.”

Kennedy struggles to reconcile his commitment to medical freedom around drugs and vaccines with whether the state has an obligation to regulate abortion, Burch explained. He argued that Kennedy doesn’t like the idea of the state telling people what they can do with their health — but Burch, Catholic Vote, and other pro-life advocates would argue that the state does indeed have an obligation to intervene in abortions, given that abortion ends the life of a human child, often brutally.

“We can’t have a wild west of medicine, particularly medicines that involve destroying human lives,” Burch said, ” and I think he’s struggling over how to reconcile those two competing notions. I’m confident that pro-life advocates can help him to understand that this indeed is something that does rise to the level of requiring the state to protect life and women.”