No One Knows What Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Believes on Abortion—Himself Included

The third party presidential hopeful has flip-flopped on abortion time and again, but history shows he leans further left than most Americans

Last August, Kennedy pledged to sign a 15- or 21-week federal abortion ban at the Iowa State Fair. Then his campaign reversed course, saying Kennedy always supports “the woman’s right to choose. He does not support legislation banning abortion.” Period.

Does that mean allowing second- and third-trimester abortions, when a child is fully formed? Apparently so, as he told podcast host Sage Steele in May. “No, I wouldn’t leave it to the states. We should leave it to the woman. We shouldn’t have government involved,” he said. “Even if it’s full term.”

“Ultimately, we have to trust women,” he later explained.

That’s the position of most far-left Democrats and their pro-abortion allies, like Planned Parenthood, and far and away more extreme than everyday Americans.

Except Kennedy does support restricting abortion after “a certain number of weeks,” he tweeted immediately after the Steele interview, suggesting he would hold to Roe v. Wade’s point of fetal viability. So which is it?

“At this point in your campaign, isn’t it fair to say you should have a firm position on this and be able to espouse it clearly and uniformly?” he was asked in June while appearing on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.

“We should trust women,” Kennedy explained in a rambling answer. “We should just trust the judgment of a mother.”

Instead, he defended allowing third-trimester abortions because “to me, that’s the last place that we want to bring in bureaucrats or government officials to make decisions. That’s when you really want to leave the decision to the mother.”

(WATCH: The Media Spin Behind “Abortion Rights”)

Later in the interview he suggested of late-term, “elective” abortions that “those should not happen.” Kennedy then described how seeing the “very gruesome” images of aborted fetuses caused him to “change my position again,” adding that “I’ll change my position always based upon if I was wrong on the facts.”

It’s important that our leaders be able to change their minds on key issues. But it’s also important for our leaders to have genuine principles and not waffle based on the last person they spoke with.

“There are some negligent women who don’t pay attention to their menstrual cycle who will find themselves pregnant and will abort a perfectly healthy baby under the auspices of ‘mental health,’” Kelly correctly pointed out. “Should that be banned?”

Kennedy’s mumbling, incoherent reply about “leaving it to the states” leaves much to be desired from a man who believes himself ready for the highest office in the country. A few minutes later, he announces that “women should have federal protection up until viability”—in other words, a federal law requiring all states allow abortion through roughly the first trimester. Or the second. Or the third, or whatever a court can call “viable.” That’s identical to President Biden’s position of “codifying Roe” into law. Again, which is it?

He isn’t ready for prime time. Watch the interview for yourself and make up your own mind:

Contrast that unconfident meandering with the firm stance of Donald Trump, who also wants to leave states with the freedom to handle abortion as they wish—even pushing the Republican National Convention to amend the party platform to remove a call for a federal abortion ban in order to remain consistent.

Remember that Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who did exactly that—return abortion to the states, where it belongs—by overturning Roe in 2022. “We want to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder,” he’s said firmly and clearly, including access to fertility treatments and IVF nationwide. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people,” he said in April. Watch it for yourself:

Kennedy may have left the Democratic Party, but on many critical issues he remains firmly on the Left—and that’s too extreme by far for conservatives.

(READ MORE: Joe Biden Lied About His Abortion Stance at the Debate. Here’s What He Really Supports)