1 year ago
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday said he would support a federal ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy.
Speaking to NBC from the Iowa State Fair, Kennedy said, “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life,” but also said: “Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child.”
He said he would sign a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks or 21 weeks of pregnancy if he were elected president.
That position puts him closer in line with multiple candidates in the Republican field than with President Joe Biden. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for instance, has called for his fellow GOP presidential candidates to support a 15-week national ban.
Kennedy’s remarks also come only days after voters in Ohio rejected a ballot measure that would have made it harder for the state’s voters to codify abortion rights in the state constitution in November.
A longtime advocate of what he calls “medical freedom,” Kennedy has been in the public eye in recent years largely for discussions about public health issues, in particular his stated doubts about mandates for vaccinations and some conspiracy theories about Covid-19, including widely condemned suggestions that the virus could have been engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
In June in a town hall in New Hampshire, he called himself “pro-choice” and spoke in favor of legal abortion.
“I’m not going be in a position, put myself in a position, where I am going to tell a woman to bring a child to term,” he said at the time.
English (US)