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Paul LePage is having a hard time telling the media clearly where he stands on the issue of women’s reproductive rights, but he seems quite comfortable telling the conservative Christian Civic League. In a CCL candidate questionnaire, LePage answered with a clear and simple “yes” to the question, “Should access to abortion be restricted?”
He told a television reporter earlier this year that “I don’t think a governor should take a position on a social issue,” and that he didn’t know if he would sign a ban on any abortions after six or 15 weeks. He must be forgetting when he told an adoring “Maine Right to Life” crowd in 2016 that “we should not have abortion.”
His reluctance to commit to a clear stance is a very bad sign. There is strong pressure in the GOP to strip women of their health care rights in every state.
Gov. Janet Mills has made her position crystal clear with this statement: “As long as I am governor I will stand strong to protect the rights of women and I will fight every and any threat to undermine, roll back, or outright eliminate access to reproductive health care services.” She has also declared, with passion, “We won’t go back.”
Don’t let LePage take women’s health care back to the dark days of back-alley abortions. Abortion never goes away; it just becomes exceedingly dangerous.
People should vote for Janet Mills, and basically for all Democratic candidates this Nov. 8, if they want to preserve women’s health care rights.
Linda Hjortland
Bath