Susan Collins

Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the country’s largest abortion rights organization, officially backed the Democrat Graham Platner for Senate in Maine on Monday, selecting him over Senator Susan Collins, one of only two Republican senators who support abortion rights.

A Maine affiliate of the organization had praised Ms. Collins’s “long history of supporting Planned Parenthood and access to essential health care” as recently as May 2025, cheering her opposition to efforts by congressional Republicans to slash federal funding for the organization.

But at an event in Portland on Monday, Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and chief executive of the national organization, suggested that Ms. Collins had failed to make the “hard decisions” when it came to advocating for abortion rights.

“Senator Collins is a fair-weather feminist at best,” said Ms. McGill Johnson, flanked by women holding signs with Mr. Platner’s name printed in the group’s signature shade of hot pink. “She is conveniently pro-reproductive freedom when it suits her.”

The race has created a conundrum for some Democrats in the state, who have voiced concerns about reports of Mr. Platner’s conduct toward women, but who also remain furious with Ms. Collins for her vote to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. Four years later, Mr. Kavanaugh was among the conservative majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion for nearly half a century.

Angela Kuefler, a Democratic strategist who has conducted extensive polling on abortion rights in recent elections, said the Platner campaign might be trying to use the issue to not only undercut Ms. Collins’s image as a moderate but also bolster its support among female voters, who make up a majority of the Maine electorate.

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