Susan Collins calls cops after pro-abortion rights message left outside her house

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) contacted police over the weekend after someone left a pro-abortion-rights message on the sidewalk in front of her home in Bangor, Maine, on Saturday night.

The message, written in chalk, said, "Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA --> vote yes, clean up your mess," the Bangor Daily News reported.

WHPA refers to the Women's Health Protection Act, a bill introduced in Congress that would codify the right to abortion into federal law and ban state restrictions on abortion. The legislation has passed in the U.S. House, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised to soon bring it to the floor of the Senate.

Bangor police responded to a call to Collins' home in the West Broadway neighborhood of Bangor at 9:20 p.m. Saturday to investigate the chalk message, Bangor police spokesperson Wade Betters said.

"The message was not overtly threatening,” he said.

By Monday afternoon the message was gone, BDN reported.

Collins thanked the police department for its quick response in a statement.

“We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the City public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home,” Collins said.

Furious pro-abortion rights protesters have targeted Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, GOP lawmakers, and even Christian church services after a leaked Supreme Court draft majority opinion last week indicated the court has voted to overturn the landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. While the court's decision is neither official nor final, were it to overrule Roe, there are 26 states with trigger laws that immediately put bans or severe restrictions on abortion into effect.

Democrats have called for Congress to codify Roe's abortion rights to prevent those trigger laws from taking effect.

Collins, a moderate Republican, is one of only two pro-choice Republican senators, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski. She has previously voted against the WHPA, claiming the Democratic-backed bill to codify Roe goes too far and does not have adequate exemptions for Catholic hospitals that refuse to perform abortions for faith-based reasons.

Together with Murkowski, Collins has introduced an amendment to the WHPA that would prohibit states from imposing an "undue burden" on the ability of a woman to seek an abortion before her unborn child is viable outside the womb. The Collins-Murkowski amendment would also permit states to enact health or safety regulations on abortion procedures, so long as those regulations do not present a "substantial obstacle" to a woman seeking an abortion.

Collins has consistently said she would not vote to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster in order to pass legislation that would codify abortion rights.