Maine Gov. Janet Mills has thrown the full weight of her office behind the effort to make Maine’s abortion laws the most radical in the United States.
If Mills’ abortion bill becomes law, as now appears certain, advanced registered nurses and physician assistants working at abortion clinics will be able to terminate pregnancies at any time and for any reason — even when a woman is in labor.
In addition to being far more radical than any other state’s abortion rules, the push to legalize gruesome full-term abortions has been replete with misleading statements and misrepresentations.
Gov. Mills repeatedly said during her re-election campaign that she would pursue no changes to Maine’s abortion laws.
It now appears that she was lying.
The bill has been advertised as protecting “privacy.”
But there are no privacy provisions in the bill. The only thing that might be construed as a privacy provision is a requirement that names be withheld from a report that the bill itself calls for. It would change nothing about how information related to abortions is currently handled, considering clinics already report details of abortion procedures to the state.
Further, there are no laws currently on the books that undermine the privacy of abortion clinic patients any more than patients of regular healthcare facilities.
Saying this bill is about “privacy” is detached from reality. But what would you expect from the people who consider ending the life of a viable pre-born human “reproductive care.”
Lastly, Gov. Mills has repeatedly attached her bill to the case of a woman who has said she was forced to go to Colorado to obtain an abortion.
She was forced to do so, she said, because late in her pregnancy, the infant was diagnosed with a horrible disease and would not have survived long after birth.
However, invoking the case of the woman who went to Colorado is merely a public relations tactic.
Maine could easily allow abortion in those cases without legalizing third-trimester on-demand abortions. Indeed, Republicans have offered to join compromise efforts along these lines.
When LD 1619 becomes law, Maine will have the unhappy distinction of sharing abortion rules with North Korea and China, two countries that permit abortion on demand at anytime during a pregnancy.
Here’s the current language of LD 1619:
