Susan Collins is uniquely responsible for the fall of Roe | Opinion

Azaleea Carlea of Portland is a civil rights attorney.

Wednesday, June 24, marked the four-year anniversary of the fall of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing Americans the constitutional right to an abortion.

Mainers cannot and will not forget Sen. Susan Collins’ critical role in dismantling the nearly half-century-old constitutional right, causing cruelty and chaos to ensue. Either she was foolish or a hypocritical. Either way, she is not fit to serve another term in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Collins was the deciding vote in appointing Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. Before casting that fateful vote, she assured Mainers that Roe was precedent and would not be disturbed, that Kavanaugh would honor the concept of stare decisis, that Roe was “settled law.” Either she fell for it, or she secretly wanted the end result, but either way Americans across the country suffered and continue to live with this catastrophic attack on reproductive justice.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, it opened the floodgates to abortion bans across the country. Currently, 63 million women live in states with bans. Sen. Collins was crucial to the process for ensuring that SCOTUS was in a position to overturn Roe and for the subsequent fact that now 20 states have banned or significantly restricted abortions.

The detrimental effects of the Dobbs decision have extended far beyond abortion access itself. Sen. Collins is also to blame for the fight that ensued over the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), the 40-year-old law that was passed under President Regan that ensured hospitals would provide emergency care to anyone who sought it.

Because of Susan Collins, women in the United States have been left to “bleed out” in parking lots. They have been airlifted out of state to get the care they urgently needed and they have been left to deteriorate to the point where their health, future fertility, organ function was in grave danger.

Collins has also placed even greater barriers in the way of survivors of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence in accessing this form of healthcare. With reproductive coercion on the rise, abortion bans and reproductive healthcare restrictions make it even harder for victims to exert agency over their own lives, their own bodies and leave abusive relationships.

Abortion restrictions have also worsened the maternal health crisis in this country and exacerbated racial disparities in pregnancy outcomes. Black women in states with bans are

over three times as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum than their white counterparts.

All this because Sen. Collins cast a critical vote to appoint Kavanaugh to the court. Four years later, in the wake of the devastation, suffering, cruelty and confusion she helped set into motion, she doubled down and said she did not regret voting the way she did. On Monday, June 22, she went on national television, dodged accountability for her vote and lied about how many Supreme Court justices overturned Roe.

For many Mainers, that refusal to acknowledge the consequences of her actions raises serious questions about her judgment and her purported independence. Mainers deserve a senator who will take accountability, and fight for what two-thirds of Mainers are asking for — the right to an abortion.

Graham Platner will do just that and more, all with a spine to stand up to the Trump administration’s attacks on bodily autonomy and our healthcare system. It’s well past time for Susan Collins to go. Mainers deserve better.