This story will be updated.
Maine’s Catholic bishop denounced Gov. Janet Mills’ new proposal expanding abortion access Wednesday, calling the policy “radical and extreme.”
The Democratic governor backed a raft of bills on the subject at a Tuesday news conference, headlined by one that would allow abortions after fetal viability if doctors find them medically necessary, a practice currently prohibited under Maine law.
Bishop Robert Deeley of the Diocese of Portland, which covers the entire state, castigated Mills and legislative Democrats in a statement, using some of the strongest words the church has ever aimed at policymakers here.
“It is beyond troubling to see how denying the existence of a human life has become so casual for this governor and members of the Legislature,” he said.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the church’s statement.
Maine had some of the nation’s most liberal abortion laws before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights last summer. Mills, a vocal proponent of abortion rights, took office in 2018 and quickly expanded access by covering the procedure under Medicaid and increasing the number of medical professionals allowed to perform abortions.
The church is a dominant institution in Maine, where roughly one-fifth of people identify as Catholic. It views abortion as murder, something Pope Francis notably repeated in 2021, although he also said bishops should deal with it in a pastoral and non-political way.
Deeley last publicly criticized Mills for an early version of gathering restrictions on churches during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bishop’s Wednesday words were more reminiscent of stance the church took on efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Maine. In 2009, then-Bishop Richard Malone called a state law doing so a “dangerous sociological experiment.”
The governor at that time was Democrat John Baldacci, who is Catholic. The church played a major role in the successful people’s veto effort to overturn the 2009 law, although Mainers legalized same-sex marriage by referendum three years later.