Maine Sen. Susan Collins continues to be weak, dishonest, and dishonest about her weakness as she pretends to consider her vote on Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Collins is supposedly pro-choice, which Kavanaugh is definitely not—dozens of anti-choice organizations did not celebrate his nomination because he respects a woman’s right to choose. Now, Collins is claiming it's all fine because Kavanaugh told her that he sees Roe v. Wade as settled law … just like Chief Justice John Roberts does.
About that ...
First, of course, Kavanaugh can be straight up lying. Collins has an impressive history of claiming she's gotten concessions from Republicans for her vote, only to have those promises evaporate once the votes are counted.
But what Collins is saying about Kavanaugh is terrifying on its own terms, because, as NARAL president Ilyse Hogue tweets, “Roberts has been a rock solid anti-abortion vote on every single case that has come before his Court, so agreeing with his ‘take’ is terrifying. If @SenatorCollins truly accepts this, she simply cannot claim she's standing with women.” Roberts may say he’s treating Roe as settled law, but “most recently in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt—he would have let stand regs that closed 30+ clinics in TX,” as law professor Leah Litman pointed out.
The best case of what Kavanaugh is saying in tying himself to Roberts is that he will leave Roe technically in place while rendering it meaningless by allowing laws that put abortion access out of reach for millions of women. And an equally likely scenario is that, with Kavanaugh on the court, Roberts and Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would decide that, hey, if they could use Janus to overturn the long-settled law that public workers represented by unions pay fair share fees, they can just as easily overturn Roe.
Susan Collins knows this. She just cares more about being a loyal Republican than she does about abortion rights—or basic honesty.