RSN: FOCUS: Bess Levin | Susan Collins, Who Doesn't Actually Support Abortion Rights Despite Claiming Otherwise, Won't Support Abortion Rights Bill

 

23 September 21

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FOCUS: Bess Levin | Susan Collins, Who Doesn't Actually Support Abortion Rights Despite Claiming Otherwise, Won't Support Abortion Rights Bill
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "Something you may have picked up on over the last several months is that reproductive rights are under assault throughout the country and people who support the right to choose are necessarily panicked."

You don’t get to describe yourself as pro-choice when you routinely do things that are the exact opposite.

Something you may have picked up on over the last several months is that reproductive rights are under assault throughout the country and people who support the right to choose are necessarily panicked. In the wake of Texas’s ban on abortion after six weeks, expected copycat laws in other states, and a Mississippi case that could see the Supreme Court overturn nearly 50 years of precedent, pro-choice lawmakers are scrambling to do whatever they can to protect the ability of a pregnant person to decide what to do with their body without input from creeps who think they should have a say. To that end, on Friday, House Democrats are expected to get the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021 passed, which would guarantee a pregnant person’s legal right to the medical procedure and “permit health care providers to provide abortion services without limitations or requirements that single out the provision of abortion services.”

When it reaches the Senate, though, the bill faces much stiffer odds, as Democrats hold a narrow majority. Of course, if supposedly moderate Republicans who have claimed over the years to be pro-choice decided to back the legislation, well, that would certainly help the cause. Like, for example, Maine’s Susan Collins, who for years has talked a big game about supporting Roe v. Wade, up to and including today. She might be someone abortion rights advocates could count on, right? She’s never pretended to hold a moderate-to-liberal position on something only to vote exactly how you’d expect a conservative to, and then later release a completely absurd statement explaining her actions, right? RIGHT??

Oh, she has? And she’s going to do it again?

Per the Los Angeles Times:

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Tuesday she opposes the Democrats’ bill, which would prohibit states from enacting restrictions on abortion through fetal viability.

Democrats, led by bill author Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, say their legislation would “codify” the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion. But in a brief interview, Collins said the bill goes further than that by interfering with existing law that ensures health professionals who object to abortion are not required to participate in it. “I support codifying Roe. Unfortunately the bill…goes way beyond that. It would severely weaken the conscious exceptions that are in the current law,” Collins said, adding that she found parts of the bill’s language “extreme.”

Collins said the bill would weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects a person’s ability to exercise their religion…. “This ‘carve out’ would be unprecedented, and I do not believe it is necessary to codify Roe,” she said in a follow-up statement.

Of course, you don‘t actually get to say you “support codifying Roe” when you’re about to help bury it in a shallow grave. Nor do you get to claim to be pro-choice after not just confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but claiming that he promised to protect a pregnant person’s right to choose.

At present, Democrats have 48 cosponsors of the bill in the Senate, and would need 60 votes to beat a GOP filibuster, the Times noted. Democratic senators Bob Casey and Joe Manchin have not yet announced a decision, though Manchin is a strong opponent of abortion and is not expected to support the bill.

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