Kavanaugh Abortion Dissent Spurs Fresh Effort To Oust Senator Collins

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

After Justice Brett Kavanaugh was condemned on Thursday for declaring “war” on Roe v. Wade by dissenting against the Supreme Court’s decision to block a Louisiana anti-abortion law, reproductive rights groups quickly turned their ire toward Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for casting the decisive vote to confirm the right-wing judge—and ramped up their efforts to oust her in 2020.

“Paging Senator Collins—this is on you,” UltraViolet declared on Twitter after the high court’s 5-4 decision.

A grassroots fundraising effort to unseat Collins after her decisive vote last year to confirm Kavanaugh has already raised millions of dollars, and the advocacy group Demand Justice announced in an email to supporters on Friday morning that it will run digital ads in Maine highlighting the judge’s dissent in the Louisiana case as yet another reason the Maine Republican should be ousted in 2020.

“Brett Kavanaugh has declared war on Roe, and Susan Collins is the one who made it possible,” Demand Justice director Brian Fallon said. “Even as it was obvious to everyone else that Kavanaugh was a partisan warrior committed to rolling back abortion rights, Collins defended her vote for him by promising that he would follow Supreme Court precedent. It only took four months for Kavanaugh to prove Collins’ promises were a sham.”

Highlighting new reports that Collins received more donations from Kavanaugh supporters than Mainers in the last quarter of 2018, Fallon declared that the Republican senator “now owns every decision” the right-wing judge makes.

“We will make sure the people of Maine don’t forget Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh,” he concluded.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote on Twitter that all of the senators who voted to confirm Kavanaugh as complicit in the judge’s attack on reproductive rights.

“Trump justices—Kavanaugh and Gorsuch—dissented in this case that would have ended legal abortion in Louisiana,” Hogue wrote. “We were called hysterical for expressing concern they would rule against Roe v. Wade and our fundamental freedom but here we have it.”

“Senator Susan Collins, Senator Cory Gardner [R-Colo.], and every single one of you that climate Kavanaugh was no threat to Roe v. Wade or precedent: You own this,” Hogue concluded.