It’s Hard to Take Maine’s Progressive Politicians Seriously on SCOTUS, Abortion: Desjardin

Over the past week, statements by two elected officials in Maine told a sad tale about the lack of seriousness with which they and many of their colleagues act when casting votes on serious issues in their various lawmaking capacities.

In the dozen years that U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree has served in Congress from Maine’s First Congressional District she has sponsored 94 bills. Of these, just 8 passed in the House, but then seven of those were ignored by the Senate. The sum total of her accomplishments while representing the people of Maine’s first district is a single piece of legislation in twelve years. If not for an act “To exempt exportation of certain echinoderms and mollusks from licensing requirements under the Endangered Species Act of 1973,” Pingree would have nothing at all to show for twelve years of work.

Having spent more than a decade accomplishing almost nothing in Washington, one would think she would have used her idle time to become more knowledgeable about the workings of government. Apparently, this is not the case as was demonstrated by public statements she made regarding rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. Taking great umbrage at the court’s decisions, Pingree fired off not one, but two angry public statements blasting the institution and calling for an old-fashioned “court packing” in which the party in power simply adds as many seats as necessary to shift the ideological balance in the other direction.

According to Pingree, Republicans use their majority on the court because they “can’t win at the ballot box.” If, however, the Congresswoman glanced around every so often, she might notice that she and her Democratic colleagues are in the minority, meaning Republicans have won at the ballot box in congressional races more often than Democrats lately. Across the Capitol, in the Senate, there are currently 49 elected Republicans and only 48 Democrats.

Calling it the “most divisive Supreme Court in U.S. history,” Pingree forgets the court that was in place leading up to the Civil War. In 1857, by a 7-2 vote that court issued the infamous Dred Scott decision, which ruled that a black person in the U.S. had no right to citizenship under the constitution, “and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” The divisiveness in this decision led to a four-year long war that cost the lives of more than a half million Americans.

Then there was the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, a 7-1 decision in which the court established the principle of “separate but equal” laying the groundwork for decades of legally protected segregation and discrimination, dividing people by race at water fountains, lunch counters, public busses, and particularly schools. If Pingree believes that denying citizenship and segregating people by race for decades are not as significant as the 2022 abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, she should look again.

The case with which the Supreme Court “overturned” Roe v. Wade by a 6-3 margin last year has not caused or prevented a single abortion in the U.S. This was not the question before it. The ruling simply moved the decision on whether abortion should be legal from the federal level down to the state level. In Maine, the end result is the most permissive abortion law in the world. This result, highly favorable to Pingree’s viewpoint, would not have happened if she had her way and the 2022 court had left Roe v. Wade alone.

Pingree, however, wants her opinion to prevail in every case that the court considers, and if it does not, she proposes drastic steps to fill the court with liberals. If, as she says, Republicans cannot win at the ballot box, how have they been able to engage in their own “court packing,” as she claims, without the benefit of Republican Presidents to appoint and Senates to confirm new conservative justices?

Pingree also cited the recent decision by the court to overturn President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Pingree sponsored the “Student Loan Forgiveness Tax Repayment Act of 2014” and, despite the overwhelming support she claims the idea enjoys among U.S. citizens, she could not even secure a committee hearing for her bill in the Congress in which she serves. Either the idea is not nearly as popular as she claims, or she is a terribly ineffective member of Congress. Perhaps both.

Clearly, Pingree didn’t take the time to actually look for evidence to support her argument. If she had, she would be aware that statistically, her rage against “divisiveness” simply does not hold up. Looking at decisions from the current term, one finds that the most “divisive” rulings—those decided by a 6-3 margin with the six Republican appointees on one side and the three Democrat appointees on the other—make up just 8 percent of the decisions. Those cases decided by a 5-4 margin with all three Democrat appointees voting together in dissent amounted to just 3 percent of the total.

The court’s Democrat appointees are hardly entrapped in some overwhelming judicial nightmare that leaves them helpless to resist an all-powerful right-wing bias. Exactly half of the cases decided this term have been unanimous in outcome and 89 percent included at least one Democrat-appointed justice voting in the majority.

And what of her idea of “packing” the court by allowing President Biden to appoint, say, eight new justices, expanding the court to seventeen. Who’s to say when Republicans again control the Senate and the White House, they would not add eight more of their own, and so on until the court is the size of the Senate?

Pingree’s ill-informed hissy-fit is a poor way to represent her constituents and it is embarrassing to Mainers. With more than a dozen years of experience and a full staff at her disposal, the least she could do is get her facts straight and then be honest with those she represents.

A similarly confounding public show of ignorance came from Maine State Sen. Cameron Reny (D-Lincoln), who took to the Senate floor and explained to any of her colleagues and constituents who might be listening why she finds the criticism of Gov. Mills’ new abortion bill misleading.

The change in law, which Mills sponsored after specifically and emphatically telling voters during her reelection campaign she would not propose or support, allows abortions literally up to the moment of birth. It would give Maine the most liberal abortion law in the world, since it is the most the permissive law possible, save one that allowed an abortion after birth.

Knowing how strongly the vast majority of Mainers oppose late term abortions both morally and politically, and that the testimony on the bill was 10 to 1 against, it is not surprising that Reny felt the need to give herself some kind of political cover for her vote in favor, but her comments were logically naïve or simply dishonest.

Addressing the part of the law that allows the latest possible abortion, Reny said that in the “unlikely event” that a woman decided to end a very late term pregnancy, “I trust that a PHYSICIAN would be looking into the reason and checking that out.”

Reny added, “This seems like a very, very, unlikely, I do not believe it would happen situation that somebody is going to abort a viable healthy baby for no reason.”

First, anyone who does not believe that Planned Parenthood will provide ample doctors who are more than willing to sign whatever documents they must in order to make abortions more plentiful has simply paid no attention to Planned Parenthood over the decades.

Secondly, right here in Maine during the debate on this very bill, Democrats brought forward Dr. Shannon Carr, a resident of Sen. Reny’s hometown of Bristol. Carr all but boasted about her willingness, even determination, to sign any document that authorizes an abortion, even if it has no connection of any kind to the health of the mother.

During a 2017 legal deposition, Carr admitted that she considered sufficient cause to abort a viable baby to include the mother’s “overall prospects in life. If she wanted to get more education, not just work at Applebee’s for the rest of her life.” Clearly, in her own words, Carr supports and would authorize aborting a baby that was simply inconvenient for the mother to carry to term right there in Reny’s district.

This, of course, raises the question of Reny: If the most extreme action made possible by the law is never going to take place, why include language that allows it? If it is so unnecessary, why did she not propose an amendment with more specific language that prohibits frivolously ending a viable human life within days or hours of birth?

The fact that Reny does not recognize the decades-old extremism of Planned Parenthood, or the callous disregard for human life with which a physician who lives in her hometown makes medical decisions, shows that she simply does not take her role as a lawmaker very seriously.

Both Congresswoman Pingree and Senator Reny could find some guidance from the first sentence in the Hippocratic Oath which guides medical professionals. When it comes to making laws, they should each learn the facts and “First, do no harm.”