Hundreds of pro-life and conservative Maine citizens showed up Tuesday in Augusta at a public hearing to express opposition to a radical Democrat-led bill that seeks to create new legal protections for both late-term abortions and the application of “transgender” hormones and surgical procedures to minors.
Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief of The Maine Wire, commented on the hearing while on-site. The “Maine Healthcare Freedom Act” is “literally the craziest bill I’ve ever seen come through a State House,” Robinson said in a video posted to X.
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“It’s the craziest thing that I’ve ever seen.”@BigSteve207 explains LD 227, the revamped Transgender Trafficking Bill.
This bill would legalize a rapist taking their victim to Maine to get an abortion, to cover up the evidence of the crime they had committed. pic.twitter.com/5xhSnGmede
— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) March 5, 2024
According to the text of the bill as provided at The Maine Wire, LD 227 contains a number of alarming measures:
- [Establish a legal] right to gender-affirming health care services and reproductive health care services. Access to gender-affirming health care services and reproductive health care services in this State, as authorized under the laws of this State, is a legal right.
- Interference with legally protected health care activity against public policy. Whether or not under the color of law, interference with legally protected health care activity and interference with aiding and assisting legally protected health care activity is against the public policy of this State.
- Public acts in other states. Any public act of another state that prohibits, criminalizes, sanctions, authorizes a person to bring a civil action against or otherwise interferes with a person in this State who engages in legally protected health care activity or who aids or assists in legally protected health care activity.
Robinson explained to CatholicVote the far-reaching consequences of the legislation.
“Nothing in this bill governs what the relationship between an adult and a minor would have to be” before someone arranges for “trans” procedures. In the cases of parents who disagree with so-called “gender-affirming care” for their child, he added:
Under this law, the mom would be protected if she kidnapped the child and brought him to Maine for gender hormones or a sex change. What’s more, the mom could sue the dad, or his conservative government, if they tried to get the child back. Any attempt to get the child back, i.e., stop the kidnapping, would be viewed as an illegal attempt to interfere with legally protected health care services.
“On the abortion side, this bill would create legal protections and rights for rapists who traffick minors to Maine for abortions to cover up their crimes,” Robinson continued:
Say an uncle rapes a 14-year-old girl with Down syndrome and drives her to Portland for an abortion. That would be legally protected health care. Law enforcement would not be able to interfere, and the parents would not be able to intervene. In fact, as with the transgender issue, the rapist could actually sue the parents for attempting to interfere with his attempt to help the minor access legally protected health care.
“All of the health care providers who abet this behavior would be protected by the same kind of immunity granted to vaccine manufacturers,” Robinson explained.
The activists who protested the bill, The Maine Wire report explained, are opposed to both its contents and the seemingly secretive tactics employed to block citizens from reading it.
State Rep. Anne Perry, D-Calais, introduced the bill during the previous legislative session. It was originally identified simply as a “concept draft” that “would enact provisions of law regarding health care in the State.” Perry launched her lengthy amendment containing the actual proposed language for the bill less than a week before the public hearing, giving little time for the public to access it prior to Tuesday.
As of Friday afternoon, Maine citizens still cannot read the measure on the legislature’s bill page.
Perry has been defensive of the bill. “During a time when we are seeing an increase in restrictions on abortion and gender-affirming care across the country, Maine needs to be a leader to defend our patients and our providers,” she insisted as she described the goal of the hearing.
State Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, however, noted both the radical content and the tactics employed in keeping the language of the bill hidden.
“Do you have the same question as me regarding LD 227, the bill endorsing state-sanctioned kidnapping?” Libby said in video of her testimony posted on Facebook. “Why does a bill that you are, I assume, proud of, have to be hidden away from Maine people?”
Robinson explained in his own video:
If you want to try and find the public version of the texts of this bill, you can’t because of the process that they’ve used to introduce this piece of legislation, which some are arguing was an intentional effort to prevent people from rallying, and opposition to this radical piece of legislation.
“[T]he bill would create protections for adults who traffick children across state lines into Maine in order to receive these treatments — even adults who are not related to those children,” he said. “Just to put this in perfect context, we’re talking about kidnapping.”
“This would legalize a rapist taking their victim to Maine to get an abortion to cover up the evidence of the crime that they had committed,” he added:
This would be legally protected behavior. And, in fact, if a family member tried to sue to have a child taken back out of the state of Maine, they could be sued themselves by the perpetrator of the kidnapping and held civilly liable for attempting to interfere with what would become a legal health care right.
LifeNews Note: Susan Berry writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
