If you haven’t used social media in the past 24 hours you’re probably unaware that Maine’s “moderate” Republican Senator, Susan Collins, on Saturday night called her local Bangor Police Dept. to report a crime.
That crime apparently does not exist.
Law enforcement officers came to Collins’ home. She filed a police report complaining that an unknown individual wrote a message on the sidewalk in front of her home, in chalk, urging her to support legislation to protect women’s reproductive rights.
“Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess,” the Bangor police dept. report says the message read, according to the Bangor Daily News.
WHPA stands for the Women’s Health Protection Act, which will be voted on in the Senate on Wednesday.
Collins, who repeatedly has insisted she is pro-choice, has announced she will vote against the bill because she worries it could force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says Collins is wrong.
“Some are saying that this legislation would tell hospitals—certain religious hospitals—that they have to perform abortions,” Schumer said last week, as Vanity Fair reports. “That is simply not true. This bill simply gives providers the statutory right to provide abortion care without medically unnecessary restrictions. That’s plain and simple. So this rumor is false.”
But speaking of churches, at least one has been committing the same “crime” Sen. Collins reported on Saturday, for years.
Historian Angus Johnston notes: “Chalking public sidewalks is legal in Bangor, where Collins lives.” He points to a 2020 WABI article that reports “Bangor has no ordinance against chalk writing on public property, something the Mansion Church has done for years.”
Those messages on public property, by the way, are Christian scripture and some apparently are anti-LGBTQ, and are still legal, the report says.
”If you want to take a piece of chalk out of your pocket right now and start scrawling on the sidewalk, you can do that.” Bangor City Solicitor Paul Nicklas told WBAI.
Maine’s Press Herald also reports that “police officers went to Collins’ home “and filed a report, but the chalk message was deemed not to be a crime.”
As for Collins, she is not expected to change her mind before Wednesday’s vote, which requires 60 votes to avoid a GOP filibuster. Democrats right now have 49 votes.
Image: DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II via Flickr and a CC license