RFK Jr faces questions about U-turn on abortion in US Senate hearing
RFK Jr faces questions about U-turn on abortion in US Senate hearing
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Health secretary nominee once identified as ‘pro-choice’ but said he agrees with Trump ‘every abortion is a tragedy’. Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s nominee for health secretary, faced questions about his flip-flopping on reproductive rights in a US Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
Kennedy identified as “pro-choice” during his presidential campaign as a Democrat, but said repeatedly in Wednesday’s hearing for secretary of health and human services (HHS) that he agreed with Trump that “every abortion is a tragedy”. “I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion,” Kennedy said in response to questions from Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, where abortion is banned.
“I serve at the pleasure of the president. I’m going to implement his policies,” he continued. Kennedy also reassured Republicans in private conversations that he had changed his position on the issue. In December, Josh Hawley, a Republican senator of Missouri, said that Kennedy had told him he would “reinstate President Trump’s pro-life policies at HHS”.
Key to Kennedy’s testimony was the pledge to investigate the safety of mifepristone, one drug in a so-called medication abortion. The drug has been the focus of attacks by anti-abortion campaigners since the fall of Roe v Wade, and is now the most common way to end a pregnancy.
The drug has been extensively investigated for safety, and it is found to have fewer adverse outcomes than acetaminophen (paracetamol), a common over-the-counter pain reliever. Key studies that supported a recent supreme court case over mifepristone’s approval in the early 2000s have been retracted.
