AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills signed into law Wednesday her bill that will allow doctors to perform abortions they deem necessary after Maine’s current viability cutoff around 24 weeks.
It will put Maine among just seven other states that allow abortions after viability, the current threshold here except when the life or health of a mother is in danger.
“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,” Mills said.
After Mills, a Democrat, proposed the measure in January along with other abortion-rights bills, it became the source of a closely watched, emotional battle between supporters and opponents that included Republicans, several Democrats and conservative religious groups.
Mills, who said during her 2022 campaign she wanted no changes to abortion laws, had highlighted the case of a Yarmouth woman, Dana Peirce, who discovered at 32 weeks her fetus had a condition that would cause it to die shortly after birth.
Peirce, who was at Wednesday morning’s signing event inside the State House, had to travel to Colorado in 2019, where the abortion was legal at that stage. Mills and Peirce were joined by representatives of abortion-rights groups and lawmakers for the bill signing at the State House on Wednesday.
“Everyone deserves safe, legal, compassionate and affordable health care and support in life and especially throughout pregnancy,” Peirce said Wednesday, hugging Mills after she finished speaking.
In early May, hundreds of opponents of the bill, along with a smaller number of abortion-rights advocates, filled the State House to testify against it during a public hearing that ran for more than 19 hours.
Although Democrats control the Legislature and almost every member of the majority party initially cosponsored the bill, it was nearly defeated in the House of Representatives and could have failed if not for several Republican members being absent for the final 74-69 vote. The situation was more settled in the Senate, where Democrats have a bigger majority.
A February poll of Mainers by the University of New Hampshire found 52 percent support for the governor’s bill, though post-viability abortions are unpopular here and nationally. Only 20 percent of Mainers supported them in a 2022 survey by the COVID States Project, although a majority here supported allowing abortions in the case of fetal abnormalities or birth defects.
The governor argued her bill targets rare cases in which fetal anomalies are discovered late in pregnancies, though Republicans and anti-abortion Mainers said it would allow doctors to perform abortions for any reason and at any time.
Post-viability abortions are relatively rare, with the vast majority of abortions in Maine and nationally in the first trimester. No abortions occurred in Maine after 20 weeks in 2021, per state data.
Maine’s Catholic bishop issued a rare rebuke of a politician earlier this year, calling the governor’s bill “radical and extreme,” and the Christian Civic League of Maine released a joint statement opposing it that included the bishop and several Muslim leaders.
Other bills from Democrats that Mills signed this session will bar Maine cities and towns from restricting abortion, require private insurers to cover abortion services and prevent medical malpractice insurers from going after abortion providers based on anti-abortion laws in other states.
