Planned Parenthood targets Susan Collins for 2020 defeat, citing Kavanaugh vote

Despite her past voting record on abortion, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has drawn the opposition of America's largest abortion provider in her 2020 re-election bid, with its acting head saying that the senator "has turned her back on those she should be championing."

On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood Action Fund included Collins' re-election challenger, state Rep. Sara Gideon, who is currently the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, in a list of congressional campaign endorsements for the November elections.

Planned Parenthood's opposition to Collins' re-election comes as Collins has racked up a history of abortion votes in the Senate favorable to Planned Parenthood's overall mission. As of the time of publication, she has a 70% rating on Planned Parenthood's congressional scorecard. In the past, she has repeatedly voted against a 20-week federal abortion ban in the Senate as well as against opposed efforts to defund the abortion giant. Last May, she cast the Senate's lone Republican vote against a judicial nominee who was opposed by Democrats due to some of her past statements against abortion.

But a key factor that drew the abortion provider's opposition in this race, the organization's leader says, was her vote in favor of confirming now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, despite the fact that Collins justified her confirmation vote at the time by saying that she was confident that Kavanaugh would uphold the high court's previous abortion precedent set in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.