RFK Jr.’s Abortion Policy: Do as Donald Trump Says

“I don’t know,” admitted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “The answer to that is I don’t know.”

The could-be secretary of Health and Human Services was responding to a somewhat procedural—but important—question during his first confirmation hearing: whether federal law ensures that a pregnant person has a right to emergency care if they are experiencing life-threatening bleeding from an incomplete miscarriage. The answer is that most hospitals must indeed provide such services, even in a state with an abortion ban.

But that was lost on Kennedy Wednesday as he was being grilled by Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto—just one of several moments in which the nominee was clearly treading water.

Day two was just as strained. When Senator Tammy Baldwin asked if Kennedy would commit to keeping Mifepristone—the FDA-approved abortion pill that data has shown is less dangerous than penicillin and Viagra—on the market because it is safe and effective, he faltered, saying he needed to review the data and that he would follow President Donald Trump’s guidance. “I’m going to—with Mifeprisone, President Trump has not chosen a policy and I will implement his policy,” Kennedy said.

“So regardless of the studies, regardless of the data, regardless of the science,” Baldwin pressed on, “you would have that policy regardless of what the science says?”

“I need those details,” Kennedy repeated.

While much of the hearings focused on Kennedy’s anti-vaccine statements from the past, various senators questioned him on abortion—a lot. Democrats asked whether he would disrupt access to abortion medication, while Republicans worried that he wasn’t antiabortion enough. In the end, though, Kennedy’s answers seemingly had less to do with whatever he thinks about reproductive health care and more to do with appealing to his potential boss.

On Title X—which provides resources for birth control and other reproductive health care, but isn’t allowed to fund abortion—Kennedy said he would follow whatever Trump decided. “I’m going to support President Trump’s policies on Title X,” Kennedy told Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma. “I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy.”

When Trump was in office, in 2019 his administration implemented a new rule that barred any provider in the Title X network from providing or referring patients for abortion care, leading Planned Parenthood and all Title X clinics in six states to drop out of the Title X network that year, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That move ended with more than 1,000 clinics around the country withdrawing from the program, preventing scores of Americans from receiving care.

But this term, a Kennedy-led HHS could take Trump’s antiabortion agenda even further: Kennedy could, for instance, pursue challenges to abortion medication. He also could also influence how national laws are enforced when people experience pregnancy complications, need emergency care related to miscarriage, or seek out abortion in a country where one in four women of reproductive age will have an abortion by age 45.

During his reelection campaign, Trump constantly shifted his rhetoric on abortion—simultaneously bragging about appointing the justices who ended Roe v. Wade while claiming that he would be the “protector” of all women, “whether [they] like it or not.” It was a precise and intentional dance: Keep his antiabortion base happy without alienating the majority of Americans who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

But once he was sworn in to office, Trump dropped the pretense. Within hours, reproductiverights.gov, a government website that offered guidance on birth control and emergency abortions, went dark. The president also restored US participation in the Mexico City Policy, an antiabortion agreement that cuts off family-planning funds for foreign nongovernmental organizations if they provide or promote abortions. Perhaps most notably, Trump signed an executive order requiring the enforcement of the Hyde Amendment, which restricts government funding for abortion services, like for people enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare.

Kennedy, too, performed a similar caper. During his failed 2024 presidential campaign, he promoted access to abortion as an issue of bodily autonomy. And as recently as last May, he said, “We have to leave it to the women rather than the state,” including “if it’s full-term.” (Days later, following pressure from his campaign, he said, “Abortion should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter.”)

But once it was clear that Kennedy was Trump’s choice for HHS secretary, Republican senators and antiabortion groups began to question whether he would further restrict reproductive rights if confirmed. Former vice president Mike Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom, launched a pressure campaign to have him toe the line.

Republican senator Josh Hawley, in particular, played a key role in the effort. He and Kennedy met in December to discuss how the potential Trump appointee could better handle the issue. Following the meeting, Hawley claimed that Kennedy agreed to ending taxpayer-funded abortions, reinstating Trump’s bar on Title X funds, and staffing HHS with “prolife” deputies.

Hawley, who has said abortion is “a violent act,” introduced a bill this year to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers across the nation. Shortly after Trump’s win, he laid out a plan to roll back “Biden’s pro-abortion policies and restore Trump’s pro-life legacy at HHS.” (Senator Hawley and RFK Jr. did not respond to a request for comment from Vanity Fair.)

If confirmed, Kennedy may once again have Hawley in his ear. “I enjoyed our conversation last month,” Hawley said, before questioning Kennedy during his second Senate hearing. The senator then asked RFK Jr. about whether he’d further various antiabortion policies, applauding each time when Kennedy said yes.