Portland police were called to the home of Maine House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross on Saturday after anti-abortion flyers and chalk messages were left in the area on the heels of a blockbuster vote on the subject in her chamber.
The incendiary messages were publicized on Monday by abortion-rights groups aligned with Talbot Ross and her fellow Democrats, who condemned them alongside a top anti-abortion group. It comes at a tense point on a Democratic bill to allow doctors perform abortions that deem necessary after the state’s current viability cutoff around 24 weeks into a pregnancy.
On Thursday, House Democrats delayed a vote for hours as they struggled to determine whether they had support to advance it. After Talbot Ross held a vote open more than a half hour, the chamber passed the bill by just one vote late at night, incensing Republican opponents who have vehemently opposed the measure for months.
By Saturday morning, anti-abortion flyers had been distributed around Talbot Ross’ home near the University of Southern Maine campus in Portland, according to a news release from abortion-rights groups.
Under a headline of “BABY KILLER,” the flyers showed the speaker’s photo, gave her address and pictured her home, saying she was “lower than child moelsters [sic] and rapists.” The message “ABORTION KILLS SHAME” was written in chalk on pavement outside her property.
Portland police were called to Talbot Ross’ home at 8:56 a.m. Saturday after a report of suspicious activity and spent nearly two hours there, according to a log. A spokesperson for the department said the abortion-rights group accurately described the basic facts of the case but declined to share further details because it was still being investigated.
Talbot Ross did not call police on Saturday morning, her spokesperson, Mary Erin Casale, said. She got the flyer via email, and her staff forwarded it to the Department of Public Safety under the normal protocol for when lawmakers receive concerning or inflammatory messages.
“Maine’s abortion providers collectively extend our unreserved support for Speaker Talbot Ross and her colleagues,” Maine Family Planning, Mabel Wadsworth Center and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, three abortion providers, said in a joint statement.
The flyers were also condemned by the evangelical Christian Civic League of Maine, which is leading opposition to the abortion-rights bill led by Talbot Ross and Gov. Janet Mills. The group would never condone tactics like those used in Portland, Mike McClellan, the league’s policy director, said.
“We don’t have to do things like that because we’re right on the issue,” he said. “We’re sorry that happened to the speaker.”
The abortion bill cleared the House in an initial 74-72 vote on Thursday after Democrats won over an unexpected holdout: Rep. Ben Collings, D-Portland, a progressive who filed a late amendment to the bill. The Maine Senate is expected to advance the measure on Thursday or Friday, which will set up another tense and heavily lobbied vote in the lower chamber.
Talbot Ross, the first Black speaker in Maine history, was among a group of leading Democrats who condemned white nationalist mailers sent to lawmakers in April. She used incendiary rhetoric of her own last week, saying at a Juneteenth event that political allies should “storm the capitol” to protest the Mills administration’s handling of her Black history law.
The chalk message is reminiscent of an episode last year in which U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called police over an abortion-rights message left on the sidewalk outside her former home in Bangor, a move that prompted more messages in the ensuing days.