Robert F. Kennedy Jr confirmation hearing: From opposing vaccines to abortions, a look at environmental lawyer's views

Before he was tapped by President Donald Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Covid shots “a crime against humanity.” His Children’s Health Defense organization linked vaccines to autism and said they’d never properly been tested.

On abortion, Kennedy wrote last May that he trusted women to make their own decisions and that the procedure should be unrestricted until the baby could be viable outside the womb.

But now that he’s facing a Senate confirmation, his views appear to have shifted to be more pro-vaccine and anti-abortion, according to the politicians he’s been trying to curry favor with.

After Republican Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma met with Kennedy in December, the senator said RFK Jr. “supports the polio vaccine one hundred percent.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina posted that Kennedy “is well-aware of traditional Republican positions within the agency regarding pro-life policies, and I expect he will continue those traditions.”

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri went further, posting that Kennedy “said all of his deputies at HHS would be prolife,” a term that conservatives use to describe anti-abortion views.

To be confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy must appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 29 and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions the following day. If both committees vote to advance his nomination, he will then need a majority of votes in the full chamber, where Republicans hold a six-seat advantage.

Anti-Vaccine Champion

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has no background in health care or medicine, emerged as one of the prominent voices in the anti-vaccine movement during the Covid-19 pandemic. He’s been walking back some of his earlier statements, saying in interviews that “we’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.”

Kennedy is an unusual ally for Trump. He hails from a dynasty of Democratic political leaders and began a campaign for president in 2023 as a Democrat, challenging President Joe Biden. When polls showed him trailing by wide margins, he switched to run as a third-party candidate.

Last August, after Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris won the Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy left of the race and endorsed Trump, hoping that this would allow him to promote his health agenda.

Kennedy’s views on abortion shifted last year while he was running for president, first saying in May that he supported abortion, even for full-term pregnancies. A few days later, he clarified on social media site X that “abortion should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter.”

It doesn’t look like all Senate Republicans have rallied around Kennedy’s HHS nomination yet.

Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who’s also a medical doctor, told Fox News that Kennedy is “wrong” on vaccines.

And former Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a polio survivor, said “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”

RFK Jr.’s positions on abortion and vaccines aren’t the only ones that senators will question.

He wants to remove fluoride from public water supplies and says the Trump administration will stop use of the cavity-preventing chemical. He’s an advocate of drinking raw milk, despite the potential health risks, and has said he plans to address the country’s “sick food system,” a goal that spurred the Make America Healthy Again push.

Kennedy has touted discredited Covid treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. He has blamed the increase in mass shootings on the use of antidepressants like Prozac. Health experts argue that linking violence to mental health problems stigmatizes treatment and that mass shooters are more likely to have a history of misusing drugs and alcohol.

For these reasons, the Committee to Protect Health Care said it had gathered more than 15,000 doctor signatures on a letter opposing RFK Jr.’s nomination.

“His appointment is a direct threat to the safety of our patients and the public at large,” the letter said. “As physicians, we are outraged by this appointment and we call on the Senate to act immediately.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren recently pressed Kennedy on his “dangerous views on vaccine safety and public health” in a letter that included scores of questions, many of which directly quoted his prior assertions.

He may also face conflict-of-interest questions. Kennedy recently disclosed that he was paid more than $850,000 for referring cases to a law firm that makes claims against an HHS-managed program to compensate people injured by vaccines.

Food Views

Yet some of Kennedy’s positions, such as his claims on the dangers of food additives, have drawn support from Democrats.

Virginia Senator Mark Warner said that while some of Kennedy’s views “zig and zag,” he was “all in” on a push to get Americans to eat healthier. But Warner said the data supporting childhood vaccines is “overwhelming” and he plans to “fight like hell” to support his state’s pharma businesses.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said that Kennedy is “exactly correct” about the food industry and agrees with him that Americans are paying too much for drugs compared with other countries. But Sanders disagrees with Kennedy on vaccines and fluoride.

Democratic Brian Schatz of Hawaii, speaking on the Senate floor last week, argued that concerns about food additives shouldn’t overshadow the dangers Kennedy’s vaccines ideas pose to America’s health.

“We don’t have to bring measles and mumps back in order to fix our food system,” Schatz said. “We don’t have to bring back the horrors of polio in the name of cleansing our diet.”