Abortion policy is a major issue in the 2024 elections, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to reverse Roe v. Wade. Many Democrats want to make this the preeminent 2024 campaign issue, knowing that a solid majority of Americans want to restore abortion rights and many are angry at Donald Trump and Republicans for taking them away.
But there’s one presidential aspirant who really doesn’t want to address the issue. That would be independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign gets exasperated at efforts to figure out his position, as the Washington Post reported last month:
“Mr. Kennedy does not want to add fuel to the fire,” campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear wrote in an email. She cited his focus on issues including chronic disease, infrastructure, disarmament and farming practices that protect the environment. “These issues also have the potential to unify the country, unlike abortion, which is fundamentally divisive.”
One might object that one major reason for elections is to sort out “divisive issues” rather than ignoring them. But an even more significant motive for the Kennedy campaign’s reticence on this issue is the candidate’s multiple flip-flops and incoherent comments about where he stands on abortion. Most recently, his running-mate (and an important funder of his campaign), Nicole Shanahan, showed that even she didn’t know his position. Podcaster Sage Steele, who had been told by RFK Jr. that he opposed any limits on a woman’s right to choose up to the point of live birth, mentioned it to Shanahan, and she was baffled, according to NBC News:
A week prior to the release of Kennedy’s conversation with Steele, Shanahan was featured in a podcast episode with the host. Steele asked Shanahan if she agreed with Kennedy’s belief that a woman should have the option to have an abortion at full term, to which Shanahan responded with surprise.
“My understanding with Bobby’s position is that, you know, every abortion is a tragedy, is a loss of life,” Shanahan said. “My understanding is that he absolutely believes in limits on abortion, and we’ve talked about this. I do not think, I don’t know where that came from.”
That is often a good question with respect to RFK Jr. But this is hardly the first time his position on abortion seems to have shifted or become difficult to understand. In August 2023, at an Iowa State Fair appearance when he was still running for the Democratic nomination, he suddenly abandoned his traditional pro-choice position and abruptly came out for a national ban after three months of pregnancy (which he seemed erroneously to believe is the point of fetal viability), a position well to the right of most Republicans. The ensuing furor led his campaign to claim that in the noise of the State Fair, Kennedy misunderstood the question, and actually he doesn’t favor abortion bans at all. Since then Kennedy has done a grand total of one event touching on abortion policy, and that was in Atlanta with anti-abortion and criminal-justice activist Angela Stanton King, who subsequently went to work for his campaign. Mother Jones explained King’s positioning on abortion and other cultural issues:
Stanton King, who is 47, vociferously supported Donald Trump—until she was hired by RFK Jr.’s campaign as its Black outreach director, where she now works. On culture war issues, she has little in common with Kennedy: Stanton King has several times been the subject of media attention for her anti-gay and anti-trans activism, issues Kennedy doesn’t touch. A staunch opponent of abortion, she is the founder of Auntie Angie’s House, an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center and home for pregnant women and new mothers.
That’s where Kennedy did his mind-meld with King. No wonder his running-mate is a bit confused.
Kennedy and his supporters are entitled to their opinion that there are other issues that matter more than abortion in the 2024 election; they often seem to have a conspiracy theory about each and every one. But that doesn’t mean he should feel free to mislead voters who do care about the subject by veering this way and that. Fortunately for those whose right to choose has been taken away or threatened, RFK Jr. is not going to become president. But he may get enough votes to influence the outcome, and if Donald Trump is the beneficiary, Kennedy will have awarded the great villain of the fight over abortion with the ultimate prize in politics.
