NARAL Pro-Choice America Responds to Outcome of Maine’s U.S. Senate Race - Reproductive Freedom for All

Formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America

Press Release

NARAL Pro-Choice America Responds to Outcome of Maine’s U.S. Senate Race

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, November 4, 2020

Contact: [email protected]

Maine Yesterday, reproductive freedom champion and Speaker of the Maine House Sara Gideon narrowly lost her bid to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate. 

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue released the following statement in response: 

“Sen. Susan Collins will be judged by history. With a dozen cases pending in front of the Court that will gut or end Roe v. Wade altogether, Susan Collins will never escape her legacy of cementing a right-wing anti-choice majority on the Court. She may be going back to the Senate but we’ve seen her true colors and we’ll not rest until she is replaced by a true champion of reproductive freedom.” 

Gideon has served as Speaker in the Maine State House since 2016 where she has been a leader in the fight for reproductive freedom. She fought to protect abortion access by passing two bills removing unnecessary restrictions on healthcare providers performing abortion care services and ending coverage bans that blocked women from abortion care. Throughout her career, she has been an advocate for women and families and has consistently fought for the rights of all Mainers to make their own decisions about pregnancy.

In her last four years in office, Senator Susan Collins voted to: 

  • Confirm anti-choice Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
  • Confirm dozens of Trump’s anti-choice judicial nominees to lifetime appointments on the federal bench, including Judge Amy Coney Barrett when she was nominated to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and extremist Illinois judges Stephen McGlynn and David Dugan just last month
  • Confirm Trump’s anti-choice executive nominees, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and current Attorney General Bill Barr
  • Attack key provisions in the Affordable Care Act 
  • Support political interference in family decisions and attack doctors who provide abortion care

In the 2020 election cycle, NARAL Pro-Choice America ran its largest-ever electoral program designed to reach, persuade, and mobilize key voters in target states across the country who are motivated by Trump and Republicans’ unyielding attacks on reproductive freedom.

Read more about NARAL’s endorsed candidates here

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For over 50 years, NARAL Pro-Choice America and its network of state affiliates and chapters have fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom—including access to abortion, contraception, and paid family leave—for every body. NARAL is powered by its more than 2.5 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 7 in 10 Americans who believe every person should have the freedom to make the best decision for themselves about if, when, and how to raise a family.