AUGUSTA, Maine — Democrats delayed a key vote Thursday on a controversial bill from Gov. Janet Mills that would allow doctors to perform abortions after a viability cutoff around 24 weeks.
The Judiciary Committee tabled the bill Thursday after an afternoon hearing was frequently interrupted due to several members needing to bounce between the meeting room and the House of Representatives, which was holding floor votes into the evening.
The Democratic-controlled panel is almost certain to recommend passage of the bill and could send it to the chamber floors sometime next week. It would put Maine among seven other states that allow abortions after viability, which is the threshold here now except when the life or health of a mother is in danger.
The measure from Mills, a Democrat who said during her 2022 campaign that she wanted no changes to abortion laws, has led to massive opposition from the anti-abortion right. Hundreds of opponents turned out for a May hearing on the bill that lasted 19 hours.
A smaller group of opponents filled the committee room and an adjacent overflow room ahead of Thursday’s work session, which was announced on short notice late Wednesday, began around 2 p.m. but dragged past 6 p.m. until the committee agreed to hold the bill until a to-be-determined date.
Democrats made only slight tweaks to the bill on Thursday that looked to be aimed at rhetorically answering some Republican criticism on the bill. Opponents have hit it in part for repealing a specific law barring those without medical licenses from performing abortions, although there are general laws against unlicensed practice that still would apply to abortion.
The changes reference those laws and clarify that doctors performing abortions must operate under current standards of care, but Republicans said during debate that the changes did not assuage their concerns and complained that they were not given more time to ask questions.
“You are impacting this process in huge, significant ways,” Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, who is organizing opposition to the bill, told the group watching in the overflow room. “You should be very proud of yourselves.”
