Pro-life advocates can’t sink RFK Jr. So they’ll try to win him over

When President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his Cabinet last week, the pro-life movement took immediate offense. Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, called Kennedy the “the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.” The founder of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said she had “concerns.”

A week later, some top pro-life activists and organizations have changed their tone. Instead of attempting to derail the nomination, they’ve settled on a different approach: trying to change Kennedy’s mind.

In recent days, a number of pro-life advocates have made efforts to engage with Kennedy, urging him to reconsider his views on reproductive rights and providing him with pro-life talking points. A cohort of abortion opponents have privately lobbied Kennedy, Politico reported; Chad Connelly, CEO of Faith Wins, said his group has done the same. “I think you’re going to see a real deep effort by a lot of the pro-life groups to get in front of him, to make sure he’s got all the facts,” Connelly said.

To these pro-life advocates, Kennedy’s flip-flopping positions on abortion is viewed as a potential strength. “I find hope in the fact that Kennedy has been moved by the truth in the past,” Lila Rose, the founder of Live Action, wrote in a blog post.

Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat before leaving the party last year, identifies as “pro-choice,” though his statements on abortion policy have been muddled. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Kennedy said he supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, though his campaign later walked back the statement, saying he “misunderstood” the question.

In an October 2023 interview, Kennedy, who is Catholic, told the Deseret News he would not support any federal ban on abortions. “My stance is that every abortion is a tragedy,” he said. “But I’ve spent my life advocating for bodily autonomy and bodily independence. And I don’t think the government is the right entity to be telling women what they should be doing with their bodies.”

He noted the government should “spend an equivalent amount of energy” assuring mothers who wish to carry their babies to term “have the resources to do that.”

Kennedy declined an interview for this story.

Pro-life activists find themselves in new territory in the post-Dobbs political environment. In the 2024 election, Trump won four states — Arizona, Missouri, Montana and Nevada — where voters simultaneously approved abortion rights measures. Trump’s stance on abortion throughout the race was squishy: he backed off of his previous support for a federal ban, instead supporting each state’s ability to determine legality. Late in the campaign, Trump pledged his administration would “be great for women and their reproductive rights.”

The stance was a shift from his previous position, said Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. In 2016, Trump promised he would overturn Roe; after his hand-picked Supreme Court appointees did so, “he tacked back to the middle, and it actually got him more votes in 2024,” Burge said during a panel event hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life on November 12.

“If anything, 2024 convinced me the pro-life movement is probably weaker today than it was at any point in the last 50 years,” Burge added.

Election a ‘wake-up call’ for pro-life movement

Gayle Ruzicka, president of the Utah Eagle Forum, said the election was a “wake-up call” for the pro-life movement. “People got kind of lazy when Roe was overturned,” she said. “They thought all was well now. And when these amendments were put up in their states, they weren’t ready.”

While the legality of abortion is left up to states, the federal government — through HHS — still oversees abortion-related standards, like regulations on chemical abortions, funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and abortion reporting requirements in relation to Medicaid.

The idea of Kennedy leading the agency is worrisome to Ruzicka. “I have great concerns — great, great concerns,” she said. “It’s tragic not to have someone that’s not pro-life to be the head of an agency that has to do with the health and welfare of the people.”

In recent days, pro-life groups have emerged with two major demands from Kennedy, CNN and Politico report: installing pro-life advocates in senior HHS positions, and restoring anti-abortion policies from Trump’s first term.

But pro-life activists simultaneously believe that if they can get in Kennedy’s ear, they can convince him to further adjust his stance on abortion. Rose wrote that Kennedy “needs to be shown the full truth” about abortion. Connelly, whose organization trains pastors to engage in the political process, said his group has been “intentional about reaching out to (Kennedy), through the campaign.” He expects Kennedy to be amenable to their requests — and chalks Kennedy’s perceived antagonism to the pro-life cause as ignorance.

“He probably doesn’t know about the freedom of conscience stuff,” Connelly said. “He probably doesn’t know about the abortion pills coming in the mail and violating state and federal law, and things like that.”

In the end, though, pro-life leaders are hoping it will be Trump, not Kennedy, who calls the shots. Activists hope to see a return to Trump-era standards by restricting abortion pill access and preventing taxpayer dollars from funding abortion procedures.

“President Trump’s first-term pro-life accomplishments are the baseline for his second term,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told U.S. News & World Report.

In a memo sent to Trump’s transition team, F. Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, encouraged Trump “to, at a minimum, swiftly reverse these changes made by the Biden administration.”