Full-page ads focused on abortion rights are set to run in Maine newspapers beginning on the Fourth of July to pressure Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to vote against President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court.
The ads, paid for by the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, will run in print and on the homepages of the Portland Press Herald, Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel, Bangor Daily News and Lewiston Sun Journal.
They read, “Trump has been loud and clear in saying he’d pick Supreme Court Justices to end Roe v. Wade. We believe him. Don’t you, Sen. Collins?”
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court, set for July 31, gives Trump the chance to nominate a second justice since taking office. His pick is likely to steer the courts to the right, including on abortion. Trump said during his campaign for office that he would nominate judges to overturn Roe, which would make the states decide whether abortion should be legal.
Collins, who has supported abortion rights throughout her political career, has said she is concerned about Roe‘s future. and her vote is pivotal in the process because her party holds 50 seats. On Sunday, she said she would not support a nominee who has demonstrated a “hostility” toward the 1973 decision and said a candidate who would overturn Roe “would indicate an activist agenda that I don’t want to see a judge have.”
Ilyse Hogue, NARAL’s president, said in a statement that “the burden of proof is on the nominee to prove that they will proactively protect Roe v. Wade and until they do no senator, and particularly no senators who consider themselves pro-choice, should vote for the nominee.”
