RFK is the Wrong Choice for HHS

I did not think twice about voting for Donald Trump for president three times in my life. However, I have been a bit surprised by the valentines some Catholic writers have penned about him post-election. The fact that he was a much better candidate than his rival should not mean that we are now beholden to King Donald and must support him in every decision and animadversion he makes.

Let us remember that he turned the Republican Platform’s pro-life stance into a defense of each state’s right to abortion laws, a somber echo of the Free States/Slave States divide in pre-Civil War politics. His wife’s public support of abortion rights was not a purely personal expression, either. It was a political move to defuse a mistaken idea of a women’s issue that could sink the Republicans.

Nor should we forget Trump’s embrace of in vitro fertilization, which he not only defended as correct but also declared as a kind of right not only protected by the government but also financed by it. It was not really necessary that the Republican team come out for the laboratories of the Brave New World of IVF.

And I cannot believe that the support for abortion publicly stated by the once and future First Lady was not a “political” maneuver. The passage of the pro-abortion referenda in several states and the blitzkrieg in the media by the pro-aborts apparently scared Trump and many politicians into becoming pro-life “lights.” Even Vance tried to defuse the abortion rights issue by declaring emphatically that no pro-life national legislation would be proposed.

Obviously, Trump was better on what we call “life” issues than his opponent Kamala Harris who was practically a high priestess of Moloch on the stump, aggressively touting the right to unrestricted abortion to all and sundry. For her, it was the issue of the campaign, not her only misguided illusion, but one apparently shared by the ones we considered the “good guys.” In the rush of the campaign the ex- and future president effectively lost his pro-life creds. I know he mentioned that he would pardon the pro-lifers unjustly imprisoned because of the FACE Act and tried to bring out Harris’ extreme position when he asked her if she would be in favor of abortion in the eighth month, but he shied away from declaring abortion wrong. He even said that Florida’s Heartbeat Law was “too extreme.”

For all these facts, it should not be a surprise to us that he is nominating someone who has practically zero credibility with the pro-life movement for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a provocative choice for the job, and I can appreciate that Trump is being deliberately defiant of “the Establishment,” “the media-industrial complex,” or the roots of the Deep State with his nominations. 

I think a defense of his initial nomination of Rep. Gaetz for the Department of Justice is that he would take the place of Merrick Garland, an outrageously partisan hack whose “political” bias would be hard to exceed symmetrically. I also think the ordinary men and women in the Armed Services were much more loyal to Trump than the folks at the top in the Pentagon and the soi disant Intelligence Agencies and deserve a little anxiety with their morning lattes. Even if he doesn’t get his nominees in power, Trump is going to have fun shaking up the powers that be. The French poet who wanted to épater les bourgeois (shake up or flabbergast the bourgeois) would enjoy Trump, I’m sure.

But Kennedy is not just a case of épater big Pharma, or the health establishment, or Big Food. He would be, as Vice President Mike Pence said, “the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”

During the campaign, RFK Jr. defended a woman’s “right to choose” and spoke about overturning Dobbs and codifying Roe v. Wade into national legislation. He has walked back his position only in saying that he believes that abortion should not be allowed in the case of viability. This is a man who has lived through almost half a century of debate about the life of the unborn. And his position is evolving as we watch? His job as Secretary would place him in a position to do much good for the preservation of human life and supporting the dignity of life from conception. There is no reason to think that he will help in that. [RFK Jr.] is a man who has lived through almost half a century of debate about the life of the unborn. And his position is evolving as we watch? Tweet This

With his usual flare for blurring issues, President Trump enthused to Kennedy the day before the election, “Do whatever you want. You just go ahead. Work on pesticides, work on making women’s health. He’s so into women’s health, and you know he’s really unbelievable. It’s such a passion.” 

What Vice President Pence is saying is that Bobby Jr. really is “unbelievable” in the sense that we cannot “believe” in his good judgment. The president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony organization admitted that “there’s no question that we need a pro-life HHS secretary, and, of course, we have concerns about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” Despite that, the pro-life leader said that she expects the “baseline policies” that were pro-life in the first Trump administration would be back in place. 

I said in print before the election that Trump was determined not to lose the election by being courageous about pro-life. But it is hard to see (and impossible to argue) how the people opposed to abortion who loyally voted for Trump should be indifferent about the nomination of someone like Kennedy to the most sensitive cabinet post about life issues. 

Daniel Darling, a Baptist pro-life leader, called the nomination “a huge blow to social conservatives.” A Texas pastor stated that the nomination “invites further judgment on our nation.” In a statement on X (formerly called Twitter), this same pastor wrote, “Many told me voting for Trump would be fine because he wouldn’t appoint pro-abortion people to positions like this. But here we are! RFK Jr. supports abortion up until birth, restoring Roe nationwide, and the abortion pill!”

I disagreed with Pence in not endorsing President Trump, although I can understand his personal and principled reasons for not campaigning for the man. However, I think he is correct about this appointment. In the rosy afterglow of an election that vindicated our rejection of so much of what the Democratic Party has embraced since Roe v. Wade, we should not give Trump a pass on this one.

[Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore]