▶ Watch Video: Doctor on Trump picking RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary Two conservative.
Two conservative groups opposing abortion rights announced Friday they support President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, after former Vice President Mike Pence criticized the selection over abortion concerns.
If confirmed to the position, Kennedy would have sweeping authority over a number of agencies that could directly affect access to abortion nationwide, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In a post Friday, Pence criticized Kennedy’s selection as teeing up “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,” Pence said in a statement published by the group Advancing American Freedom, calling the choice “deeply concerning to millions of pro-life Americans.”
Some of Trump’s allies have dismissed Pence’s objection, arguing that there is no reason to believe that Kennedy would buck the platform hammered out by Republicans over the summer that largely deferred the issue to the states.
“RFK Jr. is going to serve at the pleasure of the president. And the president has been very clear that his policy is that there’s no federal role in abortion,” Terry Schilling, head of the American Principles Project, told CBS News.
Schilling’s political action committee bills itself as “the only national pro-family organization” on a slate of issues including opposition to abortion and gender-affirming care.
