Around New England

Planned Parenthood Endorses Susan Collins Challenger

January 22, 2020

U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) regularly supports pro-abortion policies, but Planned Parenthood won’t endorse her because of her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Instead, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed challenger Sara Gideon, as The Associated Press reports. A Democrat, Gideon serves as the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.

According to The Hill, the organization said Collins “abandoned” women by voting to confirm Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexual assault but never charged or even brought to court for it.

“We were once encouraged by Senator Collins’s support of reproductive rights, yet she has abandoned not only the people of Maine, but women across the country,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s acting president, Alexis McGill Johnson said, according to The Hill.

Collins has a 70 percent scorecard from Planned Parenthood. She has voted against 20-week abortion bans and voted against President Donald Trump’s proposed Obamacare repeal.

In 2017, Planned Parenthood called Collins an “outspoken champion for women’s health.”

Planned Parenthood endorsed Collins’s Senate re-election bid in 2002, but did not endorse a candidate in her 2008 and 2014 re-election bids.