Former Vice President Mike Pence, who did not endorse or support President-elect Donald Trump during the 2024 election cycle, said Friday that he opposes Trump’s selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services because of Kennedy’s support for abortion access.

Pence said in a statement that Kennedy’s election was a departure from what he described as the Trump-Pence administration. general opposition to access to abortion.

“I believe the appointment of RFK Jr. to serve as HHS Secretary is an abrupt departure from our administration’s pro-life record and should be deeply troubling to the millions of pro-life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades,” Pence wrote.

Pence argued that Kennedy, for most of his career, supported positions such as “abortion on demand at all nine months of pregnancy” and the reinstatement of Roe v. Wade.

“The pro-life movement has always sought for the Republican Party to be pro-life, to affirm that an unborn child has a fundamental right to life that cannot be violated,” Pence wrote.

“On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and provide the American people with a leader who respects the sanctity of life as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” he added .

During his 2024 run, Trump said abortion access laws it should be left to individual states to decide.

Kennedy’s own stance on abortion lacked some clarity throughout his independent presidential campaign, which he suspended in August because he was endorsing Trump.

He once said he opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and in an interview argued that “we have to leave it to the women rather than the state.”

In 2023, he told NBC News he would sign a federal ban on the procedure three months later, but his campaign later declined comment, saying he “misunderstood” the question. In May 2024, he said he supported a woman’s right to choose an abortion at any point in her pregnancy.

He later wrote in a post on Xafter some mistake, that it “would allow appropriate restrictions on abortion in the last months of pregnancy, just as Roe v. Wade did.” And in June, he wrote on social media: “Abortion has been a notoriously divisive issue in America, but I actually see a consensus developing: that abortion should be legal up to a certain number of weeks and later restricted”.

Some anti-abortion groups also criticized Trump’s decision to pick Kennedy.

In a statement to ABC News, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said her group has “concerns” about Kennedy’s leadership of HHS.

“There is no doubt that we need a pro-life HHS secretary, and we certainly have concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Dannenfelser wrote. “I believe that no matter who the HHS secretary is, the core policies established by President Trump during his first term will be restored.”

Abortion groups also criticized Trump’s selection of Kennedy.

Mini Timmaraju, CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, wrote in a statement Thursday: “Trump has promised not to ban abortion nationwide, but his cabinet nominees are Project 2025 coming to life. RFK Jr. is an inept, unqualified extremist who cannot be trusted to protect the health, safety, and reproductive freedom of American families.”

ABC News has reached out to Kennedy for comment.

ABC News’ Olivia Rubin, Ben Siegel and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.