Senator won’t back nominee hostile to Roe
Enmity toward it would be seen as ‘activist agenda’
WASHINGTON — Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a moderate whose vote could prove decisive in filling the Supreme Court’s vacant seat, said Sunday that she would not vote for a nominee who showed “hostility” toward Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion.
“A candidate for this important position who would overturn Roe v. Wade would not be acceptable to me, because that would indicate an activist agenda that I don’t want to see a judge have,” Collins told ABC’s “This Week.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” the senator said such a decision “would mean to me their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law.”
“And I believe that that is the very important fundamental tenet of our judicial system, which, as Chief Justice Roberts says, helps to promote stability and evenhandedness,” she added, referring to John G. Roberts Jr., the court’s chief justice.
The remarks appeared to edge beyond the position that Collins staked out in conversations with reporters last week, when she made clear that she saw Roe v. Wade as a precedent that should not be overturned. She had not said explicitly that the view could sway her vote.
A longtime target for conservatives, abortion rights and the court’s liberal decision in Roe v. Wade have emerged as one of the major flash points in the fight over filling the seat left by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy when he retires this summer.
Collins, among the few remaining voices of centrism in the Republican Party, is one of two Republican senators who have supported abortion rights and, in the past, have shown themselves willing to break with their party. The other is Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Because Republicans have only the narrowest of majorities in the Senate, their votes could sink or elevate whomever President Donald Trump nominates to fill the seat.
Murkowski has said that she will consider a nominee’s view on abortion rights, but that it alone would not be a litmus test for her choice.