Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) signed a bill into law Wednesday that expanded access to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, making the state one of the least restrictive in the nation when it comes to ending the lives of unborn babies.
LD 1619, dubbed “An Act to Improve Maine’s Reproductive Privacy Laws,” states an abortion may be performed “after viability,” i.e. when the unborn baby can survive independently outside his or her mother’s womb, “when the abortion is necessary in the professional judgment of a licensed physician.”
In the past, abortion was unlawful in Maine after viability, with exceptions when the health or life of the mother was in danger.
The bill passed by a vote of 73-69 in the Maine House and 20-11 in the Senate.
Mills’ office used the narrative of the abortion industry in its official signing statement by justifying the governor’s radical late-term abortion measure as one that “was supported by a broad coalition of religious leaders, medical professionals, reproductive health care experts, and others.”
Additionally, Mills continued with the leftist theme that the new law would keep a decision to have an abortion throughout nine months of pregnancy “in the hands of women and their doctors – not politicians or lawyers.”
The governor said:
Maine law should recognize that every pregnancy, like every woman, is different, and that politicians cannot and should not try to legislate the wide variety of difficult circumstances pregnant women face. Instead, we should recognize the complexity of pregnancy and, like every other health care procedure, take government out of the decision-making process and put the doctor and patient in charge.
A report at The Maine Wire report also observed how Mills’ introduction of the radical abortion bill revealed a “strident reversal on a key campaign promise,” which ultimately “raised the questions about the sincerity of her campaign promises.”
The news outlet published a video, courtesy of WGME CBS 13 News, of Mills’ statement during her re-election campaign that she would not seek to change the state’s abortion laws.
“But many Republicans weren’t surprised by the pivot, considering Planned Parenthood spent more than $830,000 backing Mills and other Democrats,” the report noted.
Mills also said in her statement that the new law “is following best medical practice by modernizing our laws to get politicians out of reproductive health care and to make clear that the difficult decision of whether to have an abortion later in pregnancy will be made by a woman and her doctor – not anyone else.”
At Wednesday’s signing ceremony, Mills also complained that since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, “more than a dozen states have enacted extreme bans on abortion,” The Maine Wire reported.
“As a result, in America today, nearly one-third of all American women no longer have access to abortion,” the governor continued. “It’s easy to believe that these attacks on reproductive rights only exist beyond our state’s borders, that here in Maine these rights are safe and protected. But this session alone, this legislative session alone, Republican lawmakers in Maine introduced bills to restrict reproductive [rights] by enforcing ultrasounds, by mandating biased counseling, by taking away insurance coverage for low-income people especially, and by restricting access to abortion for rural women.”
Planned Parenthood spent heavily in Mills’ and other Democrats’ 2022 campaigns to bring the new late-term abortion legislation to fruition.
In a report on the state House’s approval of the bill, The Maine Wire noted the Democrats’ narrative that the bill would allow women who have been given a prenatal diagnosis of a rare fetal abnormality to abort their baby past the current 24-week limit was refuted by both Republicans and some Democrats, who contended that abortions were already allowed in such cases with the now-previous law.
In May, it was discovered that the OB/GYN who Mills had tapped to champion her radical bill was found to have authorized the 24-week abortion of a woman who later died in Albuquerque from complications due to the procedure.
Dr. Shannon Carr was named in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against her employer, Southwestern Women’s Options (SWO), The Maine Wire reported.
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Janet Mills” by Janet Mills.
