Republicans Turn a Blind Eye to RFK Jr.’s Support for Abortion

Plus: Matt Gaetz is on the line. Don’t you have any questions?

Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health and human services secretary has lawmakers, lobbyists, and lots of others scrambling for answers about what he will do if confirmed by the Senate early next year. While Trump has sent Congress a number of problematic nominees, no name has unnerved as many special interest groups as Kennedy. The public health and medical communities, medical insurers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers are all up in arms. Yet Republican senators don’t appear to be, despite Kennedy’s long documented support for abortion rights, which stands in opposition to one of the GOP’s most sacred cultural and policy positions.

One of the exceptions is Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), arguably the most pro-life senator. Unlike many elected Republicans, who are vigorously opposed to abortion access in public but have made exceptions in their own personal lives, Lankford is the real deal. And he also knows that, despite what his co-partisans might say, they’re more than happy to forget their policy positions if it’s politically advantageous or if they’re told by Trump to do so.

I first caught up with Lankford on Monday afternoon to ask him about what concerns he might have about Kennedy’s history of support for abortion.

“There’s a lot of questions there,” Lankford said. “We got to be able to ask and be able to find out what his team would be. So yeah, we’re already forming our questions and starting to be able to take that through when he comes [for his confirmation hearing].”

Lankford added that he “absolutely” needs certain commitments from Kennedy in order to give him a “yes” vote.

“I mean, where HHS was during the first Trump administration, that would be a minimum standard we need to have,” he said. “We need to have the safe, civil rights protections they’ve done before, conscience protections that [current HHS Secretary] Xavier Becerra just did away with. The Biden administration was very aggressive in trying to be able to undo basic conscience protections for individuals.”

Lankford was referring to his efforts to provide protections for health care workers and insurance providers who want to opt out of performing abortions and related care.

Contrast Lankford’s answers with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who in multiple conversations since Election Day has reiterated to me that he intends to vote to confirm every single Trump nominee.

As Hawley put it, he is not concerned about Kennedy being out of step with conservatives on abortion policy.

“I would assume that he would follow the policies of the first Trump administration when it comes to HHS on life,” Hawley said. “That’d be my assumption.”

When I followed up with Hawley about whether he thinks Kennedy is an independent thinker—afterall, he did just switch political parties and mount multiple presidential campaigns in only the past year—he brushed it aside.

“Well, he serves at the pleasure of the president,” he said. “You don’t get to be an independent thinker in the cabinet. That’s not that job. That job is you serve the administration and I assume that’s why he wants the job. So I would think he’d support the policies of the president as they were in his first term. I’d be surprised if not.”

Beyond those two senators, most of the others I spoke with are in wait-and-see mode. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician and another of the most ardent pro-life Republicans in Congress, avoided answering questions about Kennedy and abortion. But he did say the following:

Well, I think that I need to talk to him first. I’ve learned along the way in my life as a doctor and a senator that you need to speak to the person who you’re considering before you make up your mind.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the most senior Republican senator, told me he doesn’t fully understand what authority Kennedy would have on abortion as one of the United States’s top health care officials.

“I think of abortion as basically being a legislative issue,” Grassley said. “I don’t know what power he would have in that area for me to answer your question.”

When I noted that HHS can issue guidance and set certain standards not directly under the purview of Congress, he told me to circle back with him after Kennedy had a confirmation hearing, the date of which is still undetermined.

For what it’s worth, Grassley used his time during current HHS Secretary Xavier Beccera’s confirmation hearing to question him on abortion policy. Grassley’s staff also gave former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advanced warning that she would face questions about abortion policy during her confirmation hearing in 2009.

Kennedy’s own website currently lists his support for codifying the standard from Roe v. Wade, noting that it “served this country well for 50 years.”

“Mr. Kennedy supports the judicial principles behind it. If the courts do not overturn Dobbs v. Jackson and restore abortion rights, he will support legislation to accomplish the same,” Kennedy’s site adds. “Body sovereignty must be protected.”

While running for president, Kennedy also said that he supports abortion access in the first three months of pregnancy—far beyond the standards adopted in many Republican-led states and in GOP-sponsored federal legislation.

Former Vice President Mike Pence issued a statement criticizing Kennedy’s nomination, saying:

I believe the nomination of RFK Jr. to serve as Secretary of HHS is an abrupt departure from the pro-life record of our administration and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.

Kennedy’s stances clearly don’t matter all that much to Trump, either. The president went to great lengths to muddy the waters around his position on abortion during this past election. And at his direction, the GOP softened its longheld position on abortion in the party platform this summer. Republicans met the change with mixed responses. At the time, Hawley called it “a mistake to back away from the party’s longtime commitment to being pro-life,” adding, “on principle, we’re a pro-life party.” He doesn’t appear so concerned now.

Speak no evil

Last week, Marc Caputo and I reported on Matt Gaetz’s sudden about-face to make nice with Republican senators he’s scorned over the course of his career in Washington. Gaetz has been phoning senators to gauge his chances of confirmation to be the next attorney general—and in some cases, he’s denying the well-documented allegations that he had sex with a minor during his first term in Congress.

Speaking with a group of reporters Monday evening, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) mentioned that he was one of the lawmakers Gaetz called.

Congressman Gaetz called me the other night, late. He said, “Kennedy, I’ve been nominated,” and I of course said, “Yeah, I heard that somewhere.” And he said, “Will I get a fair shake?” I said, “Absolutely. Just come on over to the Judiciary Committee, answer all the questions, tell everybody what your plans are and we’ll all take it from there.” And that’s what’s gonna happen and all of this speculation about what if this happens and what if that doesn’t happen, it’s all just pure speculation.

I asked Kennedy if the allegations of sex crimes and improprieties in the still-unseen House Ethics Committee report came up in the phone call.

“No, we didn’t talk about that,” he said. “We just talked about the process.”

There are several lawmakers who have explicitly said they want to see the Ethics Committee report or expressed confidence that the allegations will be available for review by the public and members of the Judiciary Committee. Kennedy is not one of them. He was on a private phone call with Gaetz and, apparently, didn’t even ask about the allegations of statutory rape by a man who may be the country’s next top law enforcement official. That’s an indifference strikingly at odds with his past positions. Kennedy once said he wanted to see an ethics investigation into accusations of harassment against Al Franken before determining whether to call for the then-senator’s resignation. He also called for the chair of the FDIC to resign amid reports that he did not act on sexual misconduct at his agency.

Kennedy’s folksy, quick-witted schtick seems to have evaporated with regards to Matt Gaetz, which probably indicates which way he plans on voting.