Abortion rights message scrawled in chalk outside Sen Susan Collins’ Maine home prompts police response

Bangor police responded to a call to Maine Senator Susan Collins’ home over the weekend after it was reported that a pro-abortion rights message had been scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk in front of the senator’s home.

“Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —> vote yes, clean up your mess,” read the message, written in front of her home, the Bangor police reported, according to Bangor Daily News.

The “WHPA” in the water-soluble message outside of the senator’s home refers to the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill drafted by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut that seeks to enshrine protections for abortion within law and is the Democrats’ main response to last week’s leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court that signaled its intention to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion.

The police spokesperson for the Bangor force, Wade Betters, told the Bangor Daily News that officers responded to a call at approximately 9.20pm on Saturday to investigate the chalk message outside of the senator’s home.

According to the local news outlet, the message was no longer visible as of Monday afternoon.

In response, the Maine senator told the outlet that she and her family were “grateful” to the Bangor police for responding to the call.

“We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the city public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home,” Sen Collins said.

The Independent reached out to both Sen Collins and the Bangor Police Department for comment on Saturday’s incident but did not hear back before publication.

Sen Collins, a pro-choice moderate Republican, is spearheading a separate piece of legislation, with Republican colleague Lisa Murkowski, offering an alternative to the Democrat-led bill to codify abortion rights into law.

The pair of Republican senators’ gripes with the WHPA, which failed in a first attempt last February when moderate Joe Manchin of West Virginia refused to vote along party lines with his Democratic colleagues, stem from the restrictive language used within the bill, Sen Collins said.

“[Sen Blumenthal] has kept in language that supersedes laws that could impede the ability to get an abortion,” the Maine senator said.

More specifically, her and Sen Murkowski’s concerns lie within the potential rollback of the Hyde Amendment, a stipulation that prevents the federal government from funding abortions.

In the immediate fallout of last week’s leaked draft opinion, first reported by Politico, the moderate Republican from Maine said in a statement that if the draft that suggests Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would be among the majority of conservative justices who voted in favour of overturning the landmark legislation is “accurate”, then it would go against what the two judges told her during their respective confirmation hearings.

“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Sen Collins, who was among some of the key votes in favour of both justices during their Senate confirmation hearings, said.

According to the leaked draft opinion reported by Politico, the Republican-appointed justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, would potentially vote alongside Justice Samuel Alito to overturn Roe.

Previously, the Republican lawmaker had told reporters that her decision to support both men in their bid for the high court was because both had established that Roe was a “settled law”.

“Obviously, we won’t know each justice’s decision and reasoning until the Supreme Court officially announces its opinion in this case.”

The Supreme Court justices are expected to issue the official ruling in late June or early July.