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BOSTON, MA - APRIL 19: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. officially announces his candidacy for President on April 19, 2023 in Boston, MassachusettsScott Eisen / Stringer / Getty

(LifeSiteNews) — Ever since announcing his long-shot bid for the Democrat presidential nomination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has received interest from pro-lifers due to his steadfast opposition to the COVID-19 vaccines and medical authoritarianism more broadly. But in remarks last week, he confirmed that he shares the pro-abortion stance of both his party and his famous family.

Kennedy, nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and son of the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy, is a longtime environmental activist and founder of the group Children’s Health Defense, which gained prominence in recent years as a sharp critic of the federal government and medical establishment’s response to the COVID pandemic.

Last month, he launched his bid against President Joe Biden for their party’s nomination with a challenge to the orthodoxies of both parties and a pledge to “end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country.”

“My whole family, including myself, have long personal relationships with President Biden,” Kennedy told a crowd at his announcement at Park Plaza Hotel in Massachusetts. “And they are entitled to their beliefs, and I respect their opinions — and I love them back. Is it too much to hope that we could have the same thing for our country? We have a polarization in our country today that is so toxic, so dangerous, than at any time since the Civil War.”

Between opposition to the extremes of the modern Democrat Party and discontent with the current Republican frontrunner to oppose Biden, former President Donald Trump, some conservatives began to speculate about Kennedy, and how palatable some of his less-vocal positions might be to them.

His campaign website touts a desire to “heal the divide” between Left and Right and says Kennedy “has clear positions on most of today’s divisive trigger issues like abortion, guns, and immigration, but he knows that both sides have legitimate concerns and legitimate moral positions,” including “[f]ew relish the thought of dead fetuses, nor do they want to force women to have unwanted babies.”

The Kennedy campaign did not respond to an inquiry from LifeSiteNews requesting elaboration on his abortion position but did give a statement to Newsweek published May 15. Kennedy Jr. “believes strongly in the principle of bodily autonomy, whether the issue is abortion or medical mandates,” a spokesperson said. “He will keep government away from women’s childbearing choices. The moral issues are best left to the woman, her family, and her religious community.”

The news is unsurprising given Kennedy’s and his family’s history with far-left politics. In an otherwise-glowing 2021 review of his “extraordinary” book The Real Anthony Fauci, The American Spectator’s Jack Cashill faulted Kennedy for omitting the preborn from his organization’s stated mission of “hold[ing] bad actors accountable in order to help ensure a healthy future for our children.”

“It is hard to imagine any exposure more ‘toxic’ for a baby than to be vacuumed into oblivion or ripped apart by forceps,” Cashill wrote at the time. “Calling the baby a ‘fetus’ may salve the conscience of the abortion industry’s enablers, but it does not make the killing any more humane. Here is hoping that Bobby, upon seeing the irony, expands the CHD franchise to ‘children from the very moment of conception.’”

Kennedy is sufficiently out of step with the modern Democratic Party that he is not expected to pose a serious threat at winning the nomination. But a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released around his campaign launch found that 14% of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 would back Kennedy instead, suggesting he resonates with a disaffected minority of Democrats and could pose a serious problem for the party if he were to run as a third-party candidate in the 2024 general election.

Meanwhile, Biden insists he will run for a second term, although his underwater approval ratings and ongoing questions about his cognitive health continue to fuel speculation that Democrats will replace him with a younger candidate, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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