Susan Collins Told American Women to Trust Her to Protect Roe. She Lied.
Senator Susan Collins. (photo: Greg Nash/Getty Images)
A constitutional right that has been in place for 50 years is about to be shattered on the wing of a promise to her that predictably turned out to be a lie.
He did not.
Maybe his fingers were crossed because whatever he said to Collins, it was a lie. Kavanaugh’s confirmation on a bare 50 to 48 vote was the beginning of the end for Roe v Wade, and everybody knew it except maybe Collins, who insisted Kavanaugh was telling her the truth, that he had such reverence for precedence, what they call stare decisis, which means “to stand by things decided,” that Roe would be safe in his hands.
Collins is pro-choice, moderation is her brand, and the pro-choice community waited with apprehension as she did due diligence on Kavanaugh. She assembled a team of 19 lawyers to help her go through his positions before spending two hours and fifteen minutes with the judge, where she claimed to secure his commitment to stand by the 1973 Roe decision and its successor, Planned Parenthood v Casey, the ruling that in 1992 reaffirmed Roe.
By the time Collins went to the Senate floor to deliver her nearly hour-long speech, which she dragged out to full effect until it felt more like a laying on of hands, cynicism had sprouted to the point where it seemed as though the fix was in. Collins was on board with this nomination no matter what, and when a last-minute bombshell revelation threatened to derail Kavanaugh, Collins was there in high dudgeon to denounce the supposed unseemliness of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault.
She deplored the “steady decline in the dignity of the confirmation process” and “gutter politics” that she blamed on interest groups and activists on the left.
After the contentious hearings where Kavanaugh mounted an emotional defense, Collins said she met with him again and in that second meeting she again extracted what she believed was his commitment to uphold Roe. “Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article 3 of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent is not just a judicial policy, it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent. In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration. It is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed except in the most extraordinary circumstances. The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness.”
There was an out, of course, that we’ll no doubt hear a lot about in the coming days and months, that on the rare occasion when the court corrects a “grievously wrong decision,” like Brown vs. The Board of Education overruling Plessy vs. Ferguson, or one that is deeply inconsistent with the law, then SCOTUS has an obligation to right the wrong.
Collins said at the time she is not naïve, that she knows how the court works, and she prided herself on asking all the right questions. “When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long-established precedent if five current justices believed that it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said “no,” Collins told the Senate and the country in what has now become an infamous speech.
Collins won a fifth term in the Senate in 2020, and her re-election wasn’t even a close call. She was too eager to believe all that fluff about stare decisis, and now a constitutional right that has been in place for 50 years is about to be shattered on the wing of a promise to her that predictably turned out to be a lie.
Susan Collins told the women of America that they could trust her to protect their reproductive freedom. She let us down.
COMMENTS:
If SCOTUS votes to let individual states decide the abortion issue, then those states that require/demand an unwanted baby be carried to term it is then the responsibility of that state to support raising that child. It costs over $230 thousand to raise a child to age 17 today. Undoubtedly much more in future. Secondly, the woman is not solely responsible for the pregnancy. Thus the responsible male must immediately be required to come up with at east half the cost of raising the child. If he is unwilling to do so, he should be immediately have a vasectomy or be castrated so that he does not repeat impregnating a woman. Why should the woman have to carry the whole load in such situations? Such laws preventing abortion without providing help in raising the child is deeply sexist.
How about a bit of DNA analysis to identify the sperm provider? Let them have some skin in the game.
There was a heartwrenching article by a doctor treating an 11 year old who was pregnant.
Deranged Republicans defend RAPE?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/30/ohio-republican-jean-schmidt-pregnancy-rape-opportunity
Aw, gee. I didn't know the "pro-lifers" gave a damn about babies once they're born.
The greatest threat to DEMOCRACY is IGNORANCE!
SUSAN COLLINS opposed PANDEMIC FUNDING.
SUSAN COLLINS was under investigation prior to her re-election.
Her VOTES are public record and VOTERS need to inform themselves.
We supported her opponent. SUSAN COLLINS has PARKINSONS and her votes and judgment are impaired.
excerpt:
Roll Call correspondent Niels Lesniewski highlighted an April 2009 article from the publication in which Collins was forced to defend her refusal to include pandemic flu funding in an economic stimulus package two months earlier, several months into the Great Recession.
Democrats warned at the time that the loss of $870 million in pandemic funds from the $787 billion package would result in an inability to effectively fight an infectious disease outbreak—but Collins insisted the funds should not be included in an appropriations bill because they "do not boost our economy."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/13/coronavirus-grips-us-critics-remember-susan-collins-insistence-pandemic-flu-funding
excerpts:
The financial benefits that Collins and Daffron have reaped include large increases in value of the Senator’s husband’s investment portfolio following Collins’s support of the 2017 Republican-led tax policy overhaul. According to Salon, “[Collins’s] husband’s investments in eight companies as much as doubled following Collins’ vote in favor of the GOP’s 2017 tax bill — increasing in value by perhaps $340,000 to $600,000 as those companies took in billions of dollars in corporate tax benefits and stock buybacks.” (Financial disclosure forms for many government figures report many values in ranges, not specific numbers.)
Besides the financial kickbacks for Collins’s husband’s investment portfolio following the tax legislation, Collins has also been a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees government agencies that dished out a total of some $10 million in government contracts to Daffron’s now former company, Jefferson Consulting. In 2011, Collins also voted to repeal a 3% withholding tax on government contractors (like Daffron), and, among other issues, she signed a letter asking then-President Barack Obama not to require government contractors to disclose political contributions worth $5,000 or more, although both efforts did have bipartisan support.
https://bipartisanreport.com/2020/09/11/susan-collins-2020-re-election-chances-take-significant-blow/
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