Republican Senator of Maine Susan Collins called the police on Saturday night after an abortion-rights message was written in chalk in front of her house in Bangor.
Officers responded to a call at 9:20 PM on Saturday after the message appeared on a public sidewalk on West Broadway, Bangor Daily News reported.
‘Mainers Want WHPA’ a Chalk Message Written on the Sidewalk Outside of Susan Collins’ Home Said.
“Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —> vote yes, clean up your mess,” the full chalk message said.
“WHPA” is a reference to the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that will codify the right to an abortion afforded by Roe V. Wade into federal law. Senate Democrats are expected to bring the bill to a vote on Wednesday. The vote comes after the House passed the bill in September. The Senate is bringing the bill to a vote now because a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion obtained by Politico revealed the court is likely to overturn Roe.
“The message was not overtly threatening,” Wade Betters, a spokesperson for the Bangor Police Department, told the Bangor Daily News, which also reported that the message was no longer visible by Monday afternoon.
“We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the city public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home,” Susan Collins told the outlet.
“Because Senator Collins periodically gets threatening letters and phone calls, we have been advised by Capitol Police to notify the local police department when there is activity directed at her around her home,” her office said in a statement given to Insider.
Collins, who fashions herself as a proponent of abortion rights, opposes the Women’s Health Protection Act. She claims the bill goes too far because medical providers who object to abortion for moral or religious reasons wouldn’t be allowed to refuse to perform the procedure. She’s said she’ll vote no on the legislation, which is expected to fail in the Senate without the support of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who’s also voiced his opposition to it, Insider reported.
Collins voted to confirm Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, three of the five conservative justices who Politico reported voted in favor of the draft opinion, which would overturn decades of precedent on abortion rights.
“I could not vote for a judge who had demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because it would indicate a lack of respect for precedent,” she told CBS in 2018, claiming that Kavanaugh told her he “views precedent not just as a legal doctrine but as rooted in our Constitution.”
Last week, Collins criticized Gorsuch and Kavanaugh’s support for revoking the right to abortion following the publication of the draft opinion by Politico.
“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Collins said in a statement.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: I Am Catholic, I Hate Abortion But I’m Still Pro-Choice: Opinion
Collins and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who also says she opposes overturning Roe, have put forward a more “moderate” bill, called the Reproductive Choice Act. Pro-choice groups and Democrats have panned the legislation.
It should come as no surprise to those who have watched Susan Collins say that she’s pro-abortion rights but vote in ways that undermine it time and time again. We suppose she’s touchy about this history because something as benign as a sidewalk chalk message motivated a call to the police. The chalk “defacement” may have faded but voters will not forget Collins’ opposition to the WHPA.