One of the oldest abortion rights groups in the US is endorsing Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee in Maine’s critical US Senate race, according to details first shared with the Guardian. Reproductive Freedom for All is supporting Jackson, the former state senate president, in challenging Susan Collins – the five‑term Republican incumbent who has been dogged on the campaign trail for her role in overturning abortion access in the US. Collins voted in 2018 to confirm conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court.
In 2022, Kavanaugh joined the majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade, a landmark abortion rights protection. In the aftermath, more than a dozen states enacted near‑total abortion bans. This year’s midterm elections mark the first time Collins is on the ballot since the decision.
Timmaraju will join Jackson on Wednesday in Brunswick for the launch of the campaign’s Women for Troy coalition. Jackson, a former logger who began his political career as a Republican, once cast votes restricting abortion access before reversing course years later. He has expressed regret for his record and his earlier belief that abortion should “never be legal”.
In a July interview with MS Now, Jackson said he recognized he had been “wrong”. But I had a lot of conversations over time. A lot of conversations with women, doctors, community members, just people that I came to trust,” he said.
In 2023, the year after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, he co‑sponsored legislation expanding abortion access to include medically necessary procedures after fetal viability. His evolution has extended beyond reproductive rights: Jackson has also shifted his positions on marriage equality and other social and economic issues, emerging as one of the Pine Tree State’s leading progressives during his time in the legislature. Jackson’s campaign has seized on the remark to tie her to the Trump administration’s anti‑abortion agenda.
I’m running for Senate to restore and expand the federal right to abortion and make damn sure politicians never again get to take this freedom away from Mainers,” Jackson said in a statement. Planned Parenthood’s Super Pac announced this month it would spend more than $600,000 on ads criticizing Collins’s record on abortion in Maine. But strategists in both parties note that Collins’s seniority in Congress – and the millions of federal dollars she has steered back to Maine over the years – has historically proven difficult to beat.
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