WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is uniting the most unlikely of factions: reproductive rights groups and former Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom oppose his nomination.
“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,” Pence said in a statement, “and should be deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”
Pence, who served with Trump for four years but ended his relationship with him after Trump nearly got him killed for protecting the peaceful transition of power to President Joe Biden in 2021, said Kennedy has been an abortion rights supporter for most of his career.
“RFK Jr. has defended abortion on demand during all nine months of pregnancy, supports overturning the Dobbs decision and has called for legislation to codify Roe v Wade,” the former vice president said. “If confirmed, RFK, Jr. would be the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”
“On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life as secretary of Health and Human Services,” Pence added.
But Kennedy doesn’t have support from reproductive rights groups either.
“Trump ran on a promise not to ban abortion nationwide, but his cabinet nominees are Project 2025 come to life,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a statement. “RFK Jr. is an unfit, unqualified extremist who cannot be trusted to protect the health, safety, and reproductive freedom of American families.”
Timmaraju noted that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 920-page far-right policy blueprint for a second Trump administration, directs the Department of Health and Human Services to put in place policies that threaten access to emergency abortion care, birth control and assisted fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization.
“Anyone who enables these appointments is complicit in the realization of Project 2025 and the further destruction of our rights and freedoms,” Timmaraju said.
If the Senate confirms Kennedy for this post, he would oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic, has pledged to buck science to make major health policy changes, like advising “all U.S. water systems” to remove fluoride from public water because, according to him, it is linked to bone cancer and IQ loss.
There is no evidence to suggest that the levels of fluoride in drinking water lead to this. To the contrary, the CDC supports having safe levels of fluoride in water “as an effective, cost-efficient method for preventing tooth decay and improving overall oral health.”