Democratic lawmakers have yet to move forward with Gov. Janet Mills’ signature second-term bill to eliminate all restrictions on late-term abortion despite signalling early in the session that the bill, LD 1619, was a top priority.
Why the delay?
“It’s simple: they don’t have the votes,” Carroll Conley, director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, said Tuesday morning on WVOM’s George Hale and Ric Tyler Show.
Conley said there were seven or eight Democrats who never signed on as sponsors for the bill and even more who signed up as sponsors before they learned how extreme it really was, though he didn’t name names.
Listen to Conley’s interview here:
On the 2022 campaign trail, Gov. Mills said several times that she would not support any attempt to change Maine’s laws concerning late-abortion, stating specifically that she would not advocate changing Maine’s three-decade old 24-week viability threshold.
However, less than two months after winning re-election, Mills introduced a governor’s bill that would eliminate all current restrictions on abortion in the state of Maine. The bill would also expand the class of medical professional who are allowed to perform late-term abortions to include physicians assistants and advanced registered nurses.
When the bill was introduced, more than 70 lawmakers joined as co-sponsors. That’s an unusually high number of co-sponsors for any piece of legislation, and the broad support from Democratic lawmakers created a sense of inevitability around the bill.
That all changed on May 1 when more than 1,500 pro-life Mainers turned out to testify in opposition to the bill at the public hearing before the Judiciary Committee.
Conley, working with Rep. Laurel Libby’s (R-Auburn) Speak Up for Life group, organized helped organize the unprecedented groundswell of testimony against LD 1619.
Beginning the afternoon of May 1, the hearing stretched past sunrise on May 2 and well into the morning, even as Judiciary co-chairs Sen. Anne Carney (D-Cumberland) and Rep. Matt Moonen (D-Portland) reduced testimony time limits for pro-lifers.
“We have seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Mainers speak up on this issue, really loudly, at the public hearing, and since,” said Rep. Libby.
“I don’t know where the Democrats are, but they really should listen to that,” Libby said. “This is a bill that’s garnered more opposition than has ever been seen before, historically. And that’s verified with the Law Library.”
Libby attributed the massive turnout at the first public hearing to organized efforts to teach grassroots activists how they can get involved in the legislative process.
“Our goal with Speak Up for Life was to equip and empower Maine people,” she said. “And their response has been to take that education and run with it.”
Democrats have been mum about their plans for proceeding with the bill since the spectacle of the hearing.
Meantime, the marathon session of testimonies is now something of folklore for Maine’s merry band of pro-life activists.
As they prepared to overnight at the State House, the citizen activists played guitar, ate chocolate covered coffee beans, and found community and joy in the face of a political majority that appears really committed to legalizing abortion for any reason at any point during a pregnancy. Since the public hearing, they’ve kept a watchful eye on politics in Augusta, waiting for the next opportunity to advocate for protecting unborn life.
The current legislative session is expected to adjourn before the end of the month, and State House sources have told the Maine Wire that Democratic leaders may schedule the work session for LD 1619 next week.
The outcome of that work session will reveal whether Democrats will attempt to pass a less radical version of the late-term abortion that maintains some restrictions on the procedure.
The report or reports that emerge will be sent for a vote in the House of Representatives.
If pro-abortion Democrats are struggling to unify their caucus around LD 1619, as pro-lifers suspect, then that would represent a big change considering early confidence displayed by the bill’s supporters even after the public hearing.
The liberal Maine Women’s Lobby told supporters in a May 8 email that passage of the bill was “in the bag.”
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EVERY ABORTION KILLS A LIVING CHILD.
THE CRIMSON WALL
January 23, 1973,
How can it be.
Fifty years of devastation,
Leading to the ruin of our nation.
Abortion the elephant in the room,
As a womb becomes a tomb.
Over two thousand children killed every day,
Never, ever allowed to play.
Who should live, who should die,
America needs to look God in the eye.
Our country has bought the lie,
Eat the fruit, you will not die.
Like God you will be,
As your child takes a knee.
Time to end the sea of red,
No more children waking up dead.
America needs a monument in D.C.,
Never forget or let it be.
A crimson wall with over sixty million spaces,
No names, no faces.
Citizens should disarm the Democrats by proposing an abortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
I thank God for Rep. Libby and her team for their steadfast efforts to expose LD1619 for what it is…a radical attempt to legalize abortion on demand. I pray that our legislators will not fall for the bait and switch tactic of the Democrats if/when they propose a different version of that bill, aimed at appeasing it’s opponents. It is our duty to speak for the unborn and to protect their right to life. Any pro-abortion bill is advocating murder of an innocent life.