PORTLAND, Maine — In Portland’s Monument Square Monday, dozens of abortion rights activists joined with Gov. Janet Mills and Speaker of the Maine House Rachel Talbot Ross to mark the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision—the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v Wade and ended the federal right to abortion.
"It is horrifying to think that their rights will not be the same as the ones I have enjoyed my entire life. So that's why we're here," Aimee Christian, who said she does not usually attend rallies, explained Monday.
In her address to the crowd, Mills blamed former President Donald Trump—whose appointments to the Supreme Court were instrumental in forming a majority on the Dobbs decision.
"The damage that this decision has wrought on millions of people across this country falls at the feet of a single person, one man, Donald Trump," Mills said Monday.
Since the Dobbs ruling, the Mills administration and Democrats in the state Legislature have pushed through several bills to protect and expand access to abortion, including LD 1619, which allowed for abortion later in pregnancy if a doctor deemed it necessary.
Before, Maine law allowed abortions only up to the point of fetal viability, unless a doctor determined the mother's life or health was in danger.
On the two-year anniversary, Republicans who resisted the effort lamented the bill's passage. Maine State Representative and House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham was among them, issuing a statement Tuesday that put Democrats in Maine on blast.
"After promising not to change Maine's abortion law, Democrats passed a law that allows healthy babies to be aborted up until birth without a medical necessity," he said in the statement.
The wording of the law does not match his claims. LD1619 states, "after viability an abortion may be performed only when it is necessary in the professional judgment of a physician."
Other anti-abortion activists celebrated the Dobbs decision anniversary, with the director of National Right to Life, Carol Tobias, telling NEWS CENTER Maine Monday, "Dobbs gives the American people, through their elected representatives, a voice in protecting the right to life."
Still, to some in Monument Square, the reversal of Roe v. Wade marks a backtracking of rights. Shannon Darr remembers when Roe v. Wade came into being in 1973. "It was like whoa, we don't have to worry about where we can go; we can go legally if, by some accident, we are in a position where we are pregnant," Darr said.
But on Monday, Darr was holding a poster with a coat hanger—a tool used in a dangerous and sometimes deadly attempt to terminate a pregnancy when abortion is unavailable. Darr reflected on the new legal landscape surrounding abortion: "It's such a backwards move."