During her testimony Thursday in opposition to Gov. Janet Mills’ late-term abortion bill, LD 1619, a top Republican alleged that Attorney General Aaron Frey‘s office changed language in a publicly available guidance document on the legality of abortion in Maine.
Those changes amounted to a legal shift with significant political relevance to the debate over whether Maine needed to adopt LD 1619 in order to allow women, like Dana Pierce, to legally obtain abortions in cases of late-term fatal fetal abnormalities.
Assistant House Minority Leader Amy Arata (R-New Gloucester) disclosed the changes made to the guidance as an indication that Maine law already accommodate the very kind of late-term abortions which Gov. Mills and Democrats had pointed to as justifying the need for LD 1619.
Before the introduction of LD 1619, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) stated in its official “Know Your Rights: Abortion in Maine” flyer that post-viability abortions are legal in Maine in cases that would preserve the life or health of the mother.
The AGO flyer from July 2022 states that “Maine law also provides exceptions to the viability restriction to save the life or health of the pregnant person or in the case of a fatal fetal diagnosis.”
A copy of the 2022 AGO abortion rights flyer obtained by the Maine Wire can be seen below:
[WATCH: Maine AG: Unborn Babies Donât Have Rights Until Theyâre âOutâ]
This is a statement from the AGO that post-viability abortions due to rare fatal fetal abnormalities are legal in Maine. The authenticity of the document in this photo can also be confirmed by consulting the Internet Archive.
That guidance remained on the Maine.gov website controlled by the AGO until at least May 17, according records preserved by the Internet Archive.
However, at some point between May 17 and June 22, that guidance was changed to the current version — that is, the version that supported Mills and Democratic lawmakers’ case for LD 1619.
In their updated May 2023 memo on abortion, the AGO removed the language that stated there was such a fatal fetal abnormality exception to the post-viability restriction.
If, as the AGO stated in July 2022, post-viability abortions are legal in Maine when there is a fatal fetal abnormality, it calls into question the heart-wrenching story that drove Mills has used to push LD 1619, Dana Pierce’s case
Pierce is a Maine resident who said in a newspaper op-ed that she had to pay $40,000 and travel to Colorado to have an abortion on a 32-week-old fetus with a fatal diagnosis of skeletal dysplasia. The story was cited by Mills in her announcement in January of this year that she wanted to expand abortion access past 24 weeks.
âThe decision to have an abortion is deeply personal and, as in Danaâs case, can be heartbreaking. Fundamentally, these are decisions that should be made by a woman and her medical provider,â Mills said in January.
But, if what the AGO said in its 2022 abortion rights memo is correct, Pierce’s abortion would have been legal in Maine under the fatal fetal diagnosis post-viability exception.
More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers walked out of the House of Representatives when Rep. Arata was speaking, so they may not have heard her explain the revelation.
“Abortions of non-viable babies are already legal,” Arata said.
The Maine Wire has emailed AG Frey’s office to inquire why this guidance was changed, who made the change, whether political calculations related to LD 1619 contributed to the change, and whether anyone from the Mills Administration was involved.
The Maine Wire has also filed a Freedom of Access Act request in order to obtain public records that might help answer these questions.
This story will be updated if the AGO responds.
