Abortion is overturned, and Sen. Susan Collins, Maine’s most famous tight-rope walker, is back on the high wire, singing her favorite kind of song: It wasn’t me. I was lied to by Kavanaugh. How could I have known?

Listen to Carl Tobias, a law professor who studies judicial selection: “…if you looked at what Trump was saying, it seemed pretty obvious he wasn’t going to appoint anybody he didn’t believe would overturn Roe v. Wade, and he made that a litmus test for all his nominees. I think everybody knew that, including Susan Collins.”

William Yeomans, a career Justice Department official who also served as staff to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Collins “either lied to her constituents or is too naive, gullible, and uninformed to be a United States senator … Collins should step down.”

Heck, even I knew Trump wasn’t going to name a pro-abortion rights person to the Supreme Court.

While millions of women and others expressed outrage against the court’s ruling, what were among the strongest words Collins could muster? “Ill-considered action,” “We need the court to show both consistency and restraint.”

What we Mainers really need is representation that is not duplicitous, not spending a political career on both sides of the fence. Let’s learn to keep the tight-rope walkers in the circus.

Norman Abelson
Moody