Sure she could - in Maine.
What's her stance on abortion?
Self-described as pro-choice; wants to reduce demand for abortion by addressing the forces which drive demand for abortion and improving sex-ed/contraception availability/reproductive health.
She offered an amendment to the partial-birth abortion ban bill which - in my view - would have rectified that bill's glaring failure (the lack of any provision for cases threatening the life of the mother); the amendment, which failed, might arguably have brought the Act into compliance with Supreme Court rulings and may therefore have precluded the act's failure in the Federal Courts.
"[L]et there be no mistake - I stand here today to reaffirm that no viable fetus should be aborted--by any method--unless it is absolutely necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. Period." - Congressional Record, 10/22/03
"I was a co-sponsor of an amendment to the Late Term Abortion Limitation Act which sought to ban all abortions after viability except in cases where both the attending physician and an independent non-treating physician certify in writing that, in their medical judgment, the continuation of the pregnancy would threaten the mother's life or risk grievous in jury to her physical health. This legislation defined "grievous injury" very narrowly as (1) a severely debilitating disease or impairment caused by or exacerbated by the pregnancy; or (2) an inability to provide necessary treatment for a life threatening condition." - Answer to
Project Vote Smart NPAT test question
She has several times sponsored bills addressing reproductive health and its impact on abortion:
By establishing the research centers and incentives we propose in our bill, contraception options can be safely expanded: thus improving the lives of millions of American women and families; reducing substantial strains on our society; and, importantly, providing a forum for agreement, rather than acrimony, for those with differing views on abortion." (Congressional Record, 4/25/1990, p.H1695)My deal is that I'm pro-life, but I find it incompatible for anyone to claim to be pro-life and to support abstinence-only education; that isn't being pro-life, it's being anti-abortion, and it's in outright denial of reality. The
reality is that, while teaching abstinence is a great idea, and while abstinence
should be taught, it
shouldn't be taught in isolation;
some people who probably should wait are not going to wait, and if we genuinely want to deal with abortion, if we genuinely want to reduce the numbers killed every day, we have to accept reality. Reality is that provision of sex ed and contraception will bring down the incidence of abortion, and it strikes me as faintly concerning that
Dr. Frist seems to have become a convert to treating the symptom not the cause.
Sen. Snowe may not want abortion ever
banned, but she wants it reduced, she has a proven track record of introducing measures which will help in that regard, and she has a proven track record of the kind of bipartisan co-operation that is necessary to achieve that goal. She and I share a similar path on abortion; being pro-life (and, I hope, a pragmatic one), I just want to go a little further down that path than she does.