AUGUSTA, Maine — After stopping debate for more than four hours and later holding a vote open to wrangle members, Democrats in the Maine House of Representatives passed Gov. Janet Mills’ signature abortion bill with just one vote to spare late Thursday.
At the center of it was Rep. Ben Collings, D-Portland, an ardent progressive who put forward a late-breaking amendment to the bill that scrambled the chamber for hours. By the end, he broke a tie by backing the original version that would allow doctors to perform abortions they deem necessary after Maine’s current viability cutoff around 24 weeks.
The House passed the bill in a 74-72 vote, with all Republicans and five Democrats voting against the measure. One of the latter group decried “intimidation” in a floor speech. The top Republican in the chamber slammed his chair down after the majority party won a roll-call vote that House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, held open for roughly a half-hour.
“The stench in this building is overwhelming,” House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, said after returning to the microphone.
It was a dramatic evening for a measure that seemed to be sailing toward passage ever since the Democratic governor and leading lawmakers in her party unveiled the idea alongside a list of other abortion-rights bills in January, prompting a fight with Maine’s religious right.
Maine’s Catholic bishop called the governor’s bill “radical and extreme” in a rare rebuke of a politician in January. In early May, hundreds of opponents of the bill, along with a smaller number of abortion-rights advocates, filled the State House for a hearing that ran 19 hours.
Mills has highlighted the story of a Maine woman who discovered at 32 weeks her fetus had a condition that would cause it to die shortly after birth. The woman had to travel to Colorado, where the abortion was legal at that stage.
The Democratic governor unveiled the bills along with other abortion-rights measures in January after saying during her 2022 reelection campaign that she wanted no changes to abortion access laws. It instantly became a flashpoint with Republicans and Maine’s anti-abortion movement.
Maine’s Catholic bishop called the governor’s bill “radical and extreme” in a rare rebuke of a politician in January. In early May, hundreds of opponents of the bill, along with a smaller number of abortion-rights advocates, filled the State House for a hearing that ran 19 hours. Their side called it “an abortion-on-demand bill.”
“This is not a compassionate bill,” Assistant House Minority Leader Amy Arata, R-New Gloucester, said. “If it were, I would vote for it.”
Post-viability abortions are relatively rare. The vast majority of abortions in Maine and nationally come in the first trimester. No abortions occurred in Maine after 20 weeks in 2021, per state data. In Colorado, which allows post-viability abortions, around 1.5 percent of abortions in the same year came at 21 weeks or later.
But the standoff reflected new political polarization, old alliances and cultural anxieties in a state where the Catholic church is a major institution. Roughly a decade ago, many anti-abortion Democrats and abortion-rights Republicans sat in the Legislature. Now there are few who cross party lines on the issue.
Only seven Democrats refused to sponsor this year’s measure. Just one of them — Rep. Ronald Russell of Verona Island — voted for it. Toward the end of debate at 9:48 p.m., the evangelical Christian Civic League of Maine urged anti-abortion people in his district to contact him because of “pressure” from Democrats and abortion-rights groups.
Before Democrats broke to work the votes, Rep. Bruce White, D-Waterville who did not sponsor the measure and voted against it, reflected on the “poverty and hardship” faced by his mother, who raised seven children largely as a single parent. When lawmakers returned, he said he regretted that members of his party had felt intimidated on the issue.
“The Democrats are supposed to have a big tent,” he said. “That means we, as members, should be able to vote our conscience, our constituents and then the party, and I’ve been reminded that we should do it in that order.”
BDN writer Billy Kobin contributed to this report.