Pence Wages Lonely Crusade Against Kennedy as Abortion Opponents Avoid Fight

Former Vice President Mike Pence, a longtime leader of the anti-abortion movement, has taken up a lonely crusade to defeat the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary. His organization, Advancing American Freedom, is running ads against Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Pence has accused Mr. Kennedy of promoting “abortion on demand.”

His fellow abortion opponents are not listening.

Thousands of anti-abortion activists descended on Washington on Friday to mark the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that established a constitutional right to abortion. President Trump addressed the crowd at the March for Life by video. Vice President JD Vance spoke in person. Mr. Kennedy, whose flip-flops on abortion have made many conservatives deeply uneasy, was not on the agenda — and drew no mention.

But in a sign of how the right wing of the Republican Party is kowtowing to Mr. Trump — and, perhaps, of the deepening break between Mr. Pence and the president — leaders of the anti-abortion movement are lining up behind Mr. Kennedy, or at least not openly opposing him.

Tim Chapman, who as president of Advancing American Freedom is leading Mr. Pence’s campaign, said others in the conservative movement had told him privately that they agreed with the former vice president, but did not want to say so publicly. He said conservative leaders who failed to oppose Mr. Kennedy were abdicating their traditional role of pressuring party leaders on the issues the movement cared about.

“His confirmation lays bare the real question right now about what the movement exists to do,” Mr. Chapman said, adding, “We have the freedom to plant the flag, and we know there are a lot of people who agree with us on this issue, and we hope that they’ll join us.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

Anti-abortion groups and Christian conservatives have rallied around Mr. Trump since his 2016 run for office, when he promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. He succeeded; the decision was overturned in 2022.

At the march on Friday, Mr. Trump repeated false claims about abortion rights, vowing to “stop the radical Democrat push for a federal right to unlimited abortion on demand up to the moment of birth and even after birth.” Mr. Vance called Mr. Trump “the most pro-family, most pro-life American president of our lifetimes.” The crowd roared.

In picking Mr. Kennedy as health secretary, Mr. Trump took a risk that he would alienate those supporters.

Instead, two leading anti-abortion groups, Students for Life of America and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, have avoided taking a position on Mr. Kennedy. The president of the march, Jeanne F. Mancini, has commended Mr. Kennedy. Anti-abortion senators, including Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Josh Hawley of Missouri, have embraced Mr. Kennedy, who reassured them that he would support Mr. Trump’s anti-abortion agenda.

The man who forged that agenda during the first Trump administration, Roger Severino, has given Mr. Kennedy his full-throated support. As chief of the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Severino coined a new name for the agency: “the Department of Life.” He drafted the section on abortion in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s pre-election blueprint for the Trump presidency.

“I’m confident Bobby Kennedy will be confirmed and restore President Trump’s stellar pro-life record from his first term,” Mr. Severino said in a text message. “He recognizes that abortion is a tragedy and is surrounding himself with proven conservatives who will roll back Biden’s radical and unpopular abortion policies with dispatch.”

Representative Robert B. Aderholt, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the conservative House Values Action Team, said in an interview that while he understood Mr. Pence’s reluctance, he was not concerned about Mr. Kennedy becoming health secretary. “I have gotten the impression that his focus is not going to be so much on a pro-abortion agenda,” Mr. Aderholt said.

Mr. Kennedy’s pronouncements on abortion have been all over the map. In 2023, when he was running for president, Mr. Kennedy said he would support a federal ban on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy, then quickly backtracked. In May, while still a candidate, he posted a lengthy message on social media outlining his views.

“I support the emerging consensus that abortion should be unrestricted up until a certain point,” he wrote. “I believe that point should be when the baby is viable outside the womb.”

Now, in an effort to get confirmed, Mr. Kennedy is making specific policy commitments. According to Mr. Hawley, Mr. Kennedy pledged to reverse a rule issued by the Biden administration that protected patients who have had abortions, and also promised that “all of his deputies” at the Department of Health and Human Services would oppose abortion.

He also pledged to reinstate protections for health care workers who refuse to perform abortions because of their own objections, Mr. Hawley said on social media. And, Mr. Hawley said, Mr. Kennedy supports barring clinics funded by the 55-year-old Title X Family Planning Program from discussing abortion with patients. Federal law already bars Title X clinics from referring patients to abortion providers.

Mr. Tuberville also came away pleased after his meeting with Mr. Kennedy. “He’s telling everybody, ‘Listen, whatever President Trump — I’m going to back him 100 percent,’” he told reporters.

Mr. Pence has been on the outs with Mr. Trump since Jan. 6, 2021, when he presided over congressional certification of the 2020 election results as the Capitol was under assault from a pro-Trump mob.

His battle with fellow Republicans has turned personal. Katie Miller, a former Pence aide who is now Mr. Kennedy’s spokeswoman, launched a stinging attack against her former boss on social media last week, accusing Mr. Pence of firing her when her daughter was 2 months old because her husband, Stephen Miller, worked for Mr. Trump.

“The American People clearly don’t care a single iota what Mike Pence has to say — he resoundingly lost to President Trump,” she wrote. “Our country has moved on and it’s time he does too. He’s nothing but a footnote of American history.”

Mr. Trump has been walking a delicate line on abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. He has said the matter should be left to the states and has tried to steer clear of it. On Thursday, he pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters, including some convicted of blockading a clinic.

Abortion opponents have argued that if Mr. Kennedy is going to be health secretary, it is incumbent on the president to appoint other abortion foes to key positions inside the Department of Health and Human Services. But they have stopped short of speaking out against Mr. Kennedy.

“While I disagree with President Trump about whether abortion is a federal and state or a state-only issue, pro-life Americans can work with this team,” Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, wrote last month in The Federalist, a conservative online magazine.

On Thursday, before the march, Mr. Pence’s organization tried again to stir opposition to Mr. Kennedy, issuing a public letter emphasizing his rejection of vaccines and other unorthodox policies.

“RFK Jr. has supported dangerous health-related conspiracy theories, abortion-on-demand, and increasing access to psychedelics,” Mr. Chapman and another top adviser to Mr. Pence, Marc Short, wrote on social media. “Senators must approach this selection with clear eyes and reject his nomination to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”