Vermont’s progressive Legislature continues to push S.37, which seeks to completely shield “gender affirming care” and pregnancy services from intrusion, including by insurers or for professional disciplinary action.

The same bill seeks to create laws against pregnancy centers that seek to provide mother-nurturing support services free of charge to new mothers. These twin efforts reveal a grotesque political distortion in legislators who seek to flout clearly established law.

Gender affirming care includes the provision of experimental puberty blockers for prepubescent children. There are no long-term studies establishing either the effectiveness or safety of these drugs. Rather, lengthy medical disclosure forms list the various known and unknown risks of these hormone blockers and of the long-term use of hormones by young people. These drugs have been administered for some time to minors in Vermont, often without parental awareness. Now the Vermont Legislature seeks to shield providers for any legal or professional responsibility even if it turns out that these drugs cause harm to these patients.

The Vermont Legislature has apologized for the eugenics practices of a century ago. But eugenics advocates of yore did not create legal immunity for themselves — that is a novel modern effort for the transgender “science” advocates, and it will be interesting to see if it holds legal weight when eventually challenged in court. Already a number of lawsuits have been filed by detransitioning patients who claim they were inadequately warned of similar treatments.

This stunning effort to shield so-called professionals from profitable but wildly experimental “procedures” suggests some of these providers are understandably worried that one day, as with forced sterilizations and lobotomies once touted as beneficial, there may be a turn of the transgender tide as more of these mutilated and sterile children grow up. There is no provision in the bill to protect health care providers who conscientiously object to these therapies (or to late-term abortions) — only for those who rashly perform them.

A similar bias infuses the attack on pregnancy centers. S.37 slanders Vermont pregnancy centers, even while pretending it is not out to discriminate against them:

Although some limited-services pregnancy centers openly acknowledge in their advertising, on their websites, and at their facilities that they neither provide abortions nor refer clients to other providers of abortion services, others provide confusing and misleading information to pregnant individuals contemplating abortion by leading those individuals to believe that their facilities offer abortion services and unbiased counseling. Many limited services pregnancy centers have promoted patently false or biased medical claims about abortion, pregnancy, contraception, and reproductive health care providers. … The General Assembly respects the right of limited-services pregnancy centers to counsel individuals against abortion, and nothing in this subchapter should be construed to regulate, limit, or curtail such advocacy. 

This two-faced statute proposes a divided treatment of facilities: the Legislature is out to shield abortion and transgender facilities, which receive public funding, while undermining private groups that provide new mothers with free services including diapers and training, as well as support for women who might wish to keep their babies but for a lack of resources. Abortion is offered up until delivery. Vermont’s progressives seek to stifle efforts to offer women a baby-keeping alternative.

Attorney General Charity Clark has been an outspoken opponent of woman-supporting pregnancy centers. In a campaign push for her current office, she boldly claimed, “So-called pregnancy centers that use deception about abortion or pregnancy …  violate Vermont law [which] forbids deception in the marketplace.”

But can Clark establish any cases of false advertising by pregnancy centers in Vermont?

On March 10, I asked Charity Clark directly this question: “Can the attorney general point to a single instance of wrongdoing by a pregnancy center for misleading people? A pattern or list of complaints, perhaps? A claim has been made by Attorney General Clark against these centers — is this merely slander, or is there a factual basis therefore?”

To date I have had no response to this question, nor can I find a single instance of the “unfair practices” (meaning a pattern) alleged by Vermont’s attorney general.

On the contrary, I have spoken with several Vermont pregnancy centers, who provide clear disclaimers to patrons of what services they do and do not provide. These not only explain that they do not offer abortions, but that they support women who decide to seek an abortion and will provide them follow-up counseling services if that decision causes them depression. And then they provide that service.

In her rush to disparage these providers of important services (services denied by Planned Parenthood), Attorney General Clark seeks to distort the facts but also the law. The effort to create a cause of action against pro bono clinics under unfair trade practices laws seeks to bypass the basic legal premise that these laws apply to commerce (the “marketplace”), but these pregnancy centers do not charge for their services (unlike the purveyors of expensive hormone therapies that create lifelong dependency, who get paid by the government and private healthcare system). 

Vermont’s unfair trade practices statute clearly provides: (a) Unfair methods of competition in commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce are hereby declared unlawful.

This is further borne out by the statutory definition of consumer: (1) “Consumer” means any person who purchases, leases, contracts for, or otherwise agrees to pay consideration for goods or services not for resale. “Seller” means a person regularly and principally engaged in a business of selling goods or services to consumers.

Women who obtain support services at pregnancy centers pay nothing. It is questionable how much government can intrude into people’s lives outside of the regulation of commerce. Charity Clark and the extremist abortion advocates seek to use a statute designed to prevent fraud in commerce to stifle completely free services not customarily addressed in such laws — while simultaneously creating a statutory shield from those making huge profits peddling dangerous and untested drugs to children.

It appears the drafters of S.37 were aware of this glaring problem, and sought to stick a weak band-aid on the constitutional problem with this language:

For purposes of this chapter, advertising or the provision of services by a limited-services pregnancy center is an act in commerce.

Really? Calling a frog a turtle (or a biological man a woman) does not make it so — how does this shallow effort to make a free service an unfair trade practice bypass the existing statute’s declaration that the purpose of the law is to prevent unfair competition in commerce and for consideration? Is Planned Parenthood so worried about losing profits to entities that work for free that it has enlisted its legislative lackeys to protect its profit margins?

It sure looks that way.

Vermont statutes claim they look to federal law (Section 5(a)(1) of the Federal Trade Commission Act) to interpret what constitutes commerce. Section 5(a)(1) is federally interpreted to be limited to actual commerce:

Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) (15 USC §45) prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” This prohibition applies to all persons engaged in commerce.

“Engaged in commerce” typically means “engaged in business for profit.” The whole purpose of the Unfair Trade Practices laws is to protect consumers financially from charlatans. S.37 seeks to instead target protected speech and private efforts to support struggling women for free.

S.37 shamelessly proclaims:

(4) Telling the truth is how trained health care providers demonstrate respect for patients, foster trust, promote self-determination, and cultivate an environment where best practices in shared decision-making can flourish.

If only Vermont’s attorney general and progressive legislators could tell the truth, and demonstrate respect for established law, common decency, clear science (about the harms of hormone blockers), and fellow citizens.

The government is supposed to prevent unfair competition and deceptive practices. Instead it is deceptively advantaging those who provide abortion services and gender-affirming practices — unfairly competing to attract as many women as possible to have abortions, even when they might prefer not to if they just had some support.

Disclaimer: The author recently agreed to join the Board of Directors of the new Lamoille County Pregnancy Resource Center.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.