Robert Kenyon’s misogynist views on abortion are a feature, not a bug
Reform's Makerfield by-election candidate has shared several abhorrent social media posts comparing abortion to murder – but his stance is far from surprising
This week, two separate investigations by Hope Not Hate and Searchlight unearthed a slew of violent and misogynistic posts from Reform UK’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection, Robert Kenyon.
Among sexual remarks about high-profile women and connections with far-right characters such as the leader of the neo-fascist New British Union – and plenty of other heinous and questionable posts – Kenyon made numerous anti-abortion comments.
He called abortion a “cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby” and suggested women falsely claim to have been raped in order to terminate their pregnancies.
Responding to a post by the comedian John Cleese, Kenyon said: “Don’t dole out the ‘what if someone is raped by their brother’ arguement [sic]. Life begins at conception. Abortion is the cowardly act of murdering a defenceless baby and not having to face up to it cause a Dr did it. They don’t want babies? Use contreception! [sic]”
In other posts he also claimed that people advocating the right to choose were “usually the lefty crowd”, adding: “Because the left are actually evil.”
These came from three social media accounts: a now-deleted Twitter/X account, one that was suspended, and a Facebook account that Kenyon said he was “mothballing” days before his candidacy was announced.
The party has dismissed what it is calling “an establishment hit job” and defended Kenyon’s right to express his personal views. “In this country, this issue has always been a matter of conscience, regardless of which party a politician represents,” a spokesperson said.
But such sentiments are hardly specific to Kenyon. Despite having no public stance on abortion, Reform UK has consistently aligned itself with anti-abortion views, individuals and organisations.
Reform’s track history on abortion rights
When parliament voted on decriminalising abortion last summer, all four Reform UK MPs who voted – Richard Tice, Lee Anderson, Sarah Pochin and James McMurdock – voted against decriminalisation. Party leader Nigel Farage chose to abstain.
Just last month, the party stood the prominent anti-abortion campaigner, Lois McLatchie Miller as a candidate for Westminster council in London. Miller previously worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a US-based legal organisation that’s spent years campaigning against abortion rights and backing legal efforts to restrict access internationally.
ADF has been linked to the wider legal movement behind the overturning of Roe v. Wade and has expanded its work into Europe – and it reportedly brokered meetings between Farage and White House officials in 2025.
Farage also appointed anti-abortion academic and chair of the Edmund Burke Foundation, James Orr, to be Reform’s policy lead in February this year. The foundation organises the anti-abortion National Conservatism Conference, where Farage has twice been a speaker.
And Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, which has paid Farage nearly £370,000 since he became an MP, is on the board of the anti-abortion ARC forum alongside Orr and Reform MP Danny Kruger.
Elsewhere in the party is Maria Caulfield, a former Conservative MP who repeatedly voted to restrict abortion access — including opposing buffer zones around clinics, voting against at-home early medical abortion, and describing abortion providers as “unethical, unsafe, and unprofessional” and Ann Widdecombe, another former Conservative MP and long-time member of the parliamentary pro-life group and vocal opponent of abortion rights.
Then there’s former Tory turned Reform supporter and longtime anti-choice activist Nadine Dorries, who called the Labour party the “party of death” for decriminalising abortion; and former home secretary Suella Bravermen who said abortion “up until birth” (her framing of decriminalisation) was “repulsive”.
Meanwhile, Farage has stated that allowing abortion up to 24 weeks - the current legal limit, supported by medics and women’s rights advocates - is “ludicrous” and suggested that MPs should debate rolling it back. Debate over the legal limit has long been viewed as a Trojan horse used by those who seek to curtail women’s choice.
Shifting the dial
A recent investigation by openDemocracy and The Fuller Project suggests that this is more than just – as Braverman and others have suggested – “a matter of individual conscience”.
Researchers examined almost 80 Reform, Reform-supporting, and far-right X accounts and found that mentions of abortion rose significantly between April 2024 and April 2026 and found that British far-right political parties and influencers, including Reform UK, are increasingly focusing on abortion as part of wider culture war politics inspired by trends in the United States.
The later posts increasingly used emotive and extreme language, including anti-abortion misinformation. One example was the phrase “abortion up to birth”, which appeared 18 times in the earlier two-year period but rose dramatically to 190 mentions in the following two years.
The investigation showed that abortion-related activity across the selected accounts increased sharply. Nearly half of the accounts became more active on the issue, while total impressions for abortion-related posts almost quadrupled compared to the previous two years. These posts were shared around 153,000 times and gained more than 800,000 likes. Researchers also identified a growing network linking anti-abortion groups, far-right influencers, and Reform-linked figures, with accounts frequently reposting one another’s content and publicly supporting Reform.
Several prominent political figures criticised the decriminalisation of abortion. Former Home Secretary and Reform UK MP Suella Braverman stated that Reform would reverse the changes, while far-right parties including Restore Britain, UKIP, and the Heritage Party expressed similar positions. Other Reform figures also used strong language: councillor Darren Grimes called decriminalisation “morally repugnant”, mayor Andrea Jenkyns described it as part of the “degradation of society”, and London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham accused the government of treating “the ending of life as a policy solution”.
Given the nature of Kenyon’s comments, and Reform UK’s track history when it comes to abortion rights, The Lead asked Reform UK what its official policy was on abortion healthcare. We didn’t get a reply.
Kerry Abel, Chair of Abortion Rights, told The Lead that Reform UK’s position shows exactly why the pro-choice campaign group has been “sounding the alarm about the mainstreaming of anti-abortion politics for years”.
She said: “Their attacks on abortion rights are a direct threat to women’s rights, bodily autonomy and access to essential healthcare.”
So no, Kenyon’s comments are not a blip. Nor are they, as Kruger put it, simply the opinions of “an ordinary man from an ordinary place”. Opposition to women’s reproductive rights is at the heart of Reform’s ideological position – whether they state officially or not. ■
About the author: Ella Glover is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle. You can find her work in Prospect Magazine, Dazed, Observer Magazine, Women’s Health and - most importantly - here at The Lead.
The Lead is keeping an eye on Reform UK and their fellow travellers. Get in touch on X, Bluesky and Instagram or email ella@thelead.uk with tips and stories. We especially want to hear from readers whose local council is now run by Farage’s followers. See our full ReformWatch archive.
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No uterus - no opinion.
Nazi attitudes, the lot of them. Appalling comments about Carol Vordeman are unacceptable and underline that arseholes have an important role in the Reform Party.