For Maine voters weighing abortion access, Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s 2018 vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh has become a central question in her first Senate race since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh later joined the court’s majority in that decision. Collins says she supports abortion rights and disagrees with the ruling, but she continues to defend her vote for him.
The election against Democratic nominee Troy Jackson is scheduled for Nov. 3. Here are three moments that explain how the Kavanaugh vote, the end of Roe and Collins’s later actions came to define part of the campaign.
What are the three moments Maine voters are weighing?
Collins backed Kavanaugh in 2018. Before the Senate vote, Collins said Kavanaugh had told her in a two-hour meeting that he viewed Roe as settled law. She then explained her decision in a 45-minute speech on the Senate floor. The Senate confirmed him 50-48 on Oct. 6, 2018, with Collins voting yes, according to PBS News’ account of the race.
Kavanaugh joined the Dobbs majority. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ending the federal constitutional protection those decisions had provided and returning abortion regulation to elected officials. Collins did not vote on Dobbs; her role was voting to confirm a justice who later joined the majority.
Collins criticized Dobbs but stood by her confirmation vote. She and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced a bill in February 2022 to put Roe and Casey’s protections into federal law. After Dobbs, Collins joined a bipartisan effort to propose restoring federal abortion protections and protecting access to contraception. In June 2026, she told reporters, “I do not regret that vote.”
These events do not show Collins moving from support for abortion rights to opposition. She has described herself as pro-choice, criticized the court’s decision and supported legislation to protect abortion rights. The conflict is between that stated position and her consequential vote to confirm Kavanaugh, which she still says was not a mistake.
What does Maine law protect after Roe?
Before Dobbs, Roe and Casey established a federal constitutional baseline that applied across the country. Dobbs removed that protection and left abortion regulation to elected representatives, making state law more important to what care is legally available.
Maine’s current statute says the state should not restrict abortion before viability, subject to provisions in the law. After viability, an abortion may be performed when a physician judges it necessary. That state framework is not the same as the nationwide constitutional protection that Roe provided.
Gov. Janet Mills signed LD 1619 on July 19, 2023, changing Maine’s rules for abortions after viability. Maine also enacted protections for providers against certain legal actions brought by other states, according to the reporting. Those changes are part of the state’s response to Dobbs; they do not restore Roe’s federal protection.
The distinction matters to people seeking care because Maine’s protections come from state law, while the former constitutional rule applied nationally. University of Maine political science professor Mark Brewer said Maine had not experienced the clinic closures seen in some Republican-controlled states, a difference he said could make abortion less prominent in the state’s campaign. That does not settle how voters will weigh the issue or how Maine law could change in the future.
How does Collins explain her record, and what does Jackson say?
Collins has pointed to her votes to confirm Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, as well as her work with Murkowski on federal abortion protections. Her spokesperson, Blake Kernen, characterized Collins as the race’s only reliably pro-choice candidate. That is the campaign’s description, not an independent finding.
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Jackson says he worked to pass strong abortion protections in Maine. He has also acknowledged that he once opposed abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and says conversations with women changed his views. The reporting describes that evolution but does not lay out a detailed federal abortion agenda for him.
For voters Erin Evans and Bente Lundh, Collins’s Kavanaugh vote is a measure of trust. Evans said she regrets voting for Collins and plans to support Jackson. Reflecting on her earlier vote for Collins, Evans told PBS News, “I was a really uninformed voter.” Lundh said the confirmation vote damaged Collins’s image as a moderate.
Another voter sees the senator’s record differently. Mary Ann Lynch, a Democrat who supports Collins, said she values Collins’s willingness to cross party lines and cited her votes for Sotomayor and Kagan. “Neither party, in my view, has a monopoly on the truth and how best to do things,” Lynch told PBS News.
Those accounts show why the same record can carry different weight: some voters see the Kavanaugh confirmation as the clearest test of Collins’s position, while others give more weight to her broader record and later support for abortion protections.
How much could abortion matter in the election?
Abortion is a prominent line of attack in the campaign, but that does not mean voters rank it above every other concern. A September New York Times/Siena poll cited in the reporting found that nearly no likely Maine voters named abortion, in their own words, as the most important issue in deciding their congressional vote. The report does not give an exact number, and the result does not establish that voters are indifferent to abortion rights.
Maine’s 2020 Senate race offered a different measure of opinion: 76% of voters said the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe, according to AP VoteCast. That included most Collins voters, though 35% of people who backed her said they wanted Roe overturned. The figures underline the political tension: Collins won support from voters with different views, while the effect of her confirmation vote became clearer after the court’s ruling.
Collins’s record now includes both the vote that helped put Kavanaugh on the court and her later criticism of Dobbs and support for federal protections. Maine voters will decide on Nov. 3 how much each part matters—and whether state-law protections and a senator’s stated position are enough after the loss of Roe’s national guarantee.