A Republican lawmaker is making known her opposition to Proposal 5, a constitutional amendment that would make abortion until the moment of birth the most protected right in Vermont.
“It sets it above anything else by creating a standard,” Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, said on “The Morning Drive” radio show this week with hosts Anthony Neri and Kurt Wright. “A compelling interest standard is something that the courts develop as a way to balance interference with a constitutional right.”
Language from the proposal states that there must be no government involvement in abortions “unless justified by a compelling state interest.”
This takes major decisions on abortion policy away from elected legislators and into the seats of appointed judges, according to Donahue.
“It becomes completely a court decision, up to whatever justices are in place at a given time,” she said. She added that this would make abortion “more compelling inherently than any other right in the constitution.”
She also reminded listeners that Vermont already added state restrictions on having any new abortion laws in the past.
“The new statute that we passed just a couple of years ago was very explicit about banning the state from any kind of interference with access to any abortion,” Donahue said.”That means that in Vermont there are no restrictions permitted.”
She said that the current branding of the amendment is misleading in that “people will not make the connection and understand that this will permit abortion up through nine months.” Instead, they will hear only that it protects reproductive liberties — a positive in the minds of many Vermonters.
The proposal’s broad language is a problem, Donahue said, because it applies to more than just abortion.
“Prop 5 is undefined as to what other kinds of healthcare it might include because it basically says that any kind of reproductive liberties are preeminent, and so clearly it is intended to cover abortion, but it covers everything else that one might define as a reproductive liberty.”
She explained that if lawmakers in the future decided that their constituents want some limits on late-term abortions or requirements to contact the family, those would be harder to do after a constitutional amendment.
“By putting it in the Constitution you are more assured that we would never enact any restrictions for instance on the third trimester of a pregnancy or to involve parents, anything like that,” Donahue said.
Currently, Roe v. Wade allows for protections in both the second and especially the third trimesters, and says the state has an interest in the life developing in the womb.
“That’s where it’s very misleading to the public because it goes way beyond Roe v. Wade. … It’s implying that we’re just adopting what’s current constitutional law in the country and it’s just not true. People generally don’t support abortion on demand up to 9 months. There’s virtually no country in the world that takes that position, but that’s what this would do,” Donahue said.
She also said the proposal has implications for health care workers such as doctors or nurses who do not want to participate in abortion.
“I think it’s clear that when it says it’s a superseding right, that means a person who did not want to participate in an abortion as a nurse or a doctor, could be told that you are interfering with a constitutional right, you can’t refuse,” she said.
Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.
Well done. We need more minds like yours in Montpelier
I have no idea why people would want to pay taxes to a state that has such a low value upon our precious unborn babies.
Have you been paying attention to the fertility issues and amounts of miscarriages that vaccinated and boosted women are having?
We need much *less* abortion because the desire to adoption will grow much greater as women suffer fertility issues more.
Many, MANY women have said their menstruation cycles have been affected from the vaccines.
These are sad times when the lunatics are running things……..God help all the unborn out there….
Thank you
This is what the majority of outcomes are like when we entrust our affairs and business to the looney left.
November is fast approaching, lest we make the best use of that day, election day in 2022, and vote these bums out of office.
The majority of VT voters have been way too easy on these people, now is the time
to fish or cut bait.
We need to vote “NO” for Prop 5, Article 22, Reproductive Freedom or whatever the proponents of Prop 5 want to call it. Vermonters do not want a constitutional right to kill their babies before birth.
ABORTION is MURDER !!! There are so many couples out there who can not have children. Adoption is almost impossible nowadays because women run to abort.
If you don’t want a baby then get yourself fixed !!! Get on the pill, use condoms, it’s the responsibility of both.
I hate it when these liberals say a baby isn’t human till it’s born.!!! A baby is human from the moment it is conceived. Abortion places sell body parts. they “harvest” the bodies…
STOP MURDERING BABIES.!!!!
Pro-life
.
Hear, hear!
Is there a reason for an abortion, yes if there is a major medical concern with the mother,
or in cases of ” rape ” or ” Incest “, other than that and abortion should be illegal and not
funded by any tax-payer money, not one dime !!!
To all these ” woke females ” that are using ” abortion ” as birth control, you’re idiots, when
in this day and age, there are all sorts of birth control on the market, pills for the long hall
or the morning after, condoms for the stud in your endeavors, or just keep your pants up !!
Any elected official that supports abortions on the fly, needs to be removed from office, wake
up people, this is just more agenda-driven nonsense, people need to take responsibility for
their action, and stop killing the future generations before they have a voice, pretty pathetic.
For all these ” woke ” females if you want to have sex for pleasure only, then get sterilized or
have you stud get a vasectomy, and you can ” rock your socks off ” all night long !!!
I used to believe, like you, that in cases of rape or incest, abortion was okay. That was until I read about Ryan Scott Bomberger. He was the product of rape and was adopted into a loving family. He is now the chief creative officer of the Atlanta-based Radiance Foundation (theradiancefoundation.org). Please read his story and see if it changes your mind. All life is precious.
Life is indeed precious in all instances. Some unfortunate but in God’s eyes precious!
Thank you.
Can anyone say what the Vermont legislature is thinking, or if they are even thinking at all, when pushing Prop 5?
On the one hand, the legislature is pushing Prop 5 which would allow few to no limits on abortion……The killing of babies.
On the other hand, this very same legislature is pushing to form a commission to study and apologize for the practice of eugenics that occurred generations ago……Eugenics is the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.
Can someone in the Vermont legislature tell the people of Vermont what real moral difference there is between eugenics of a hundred years ago or abortion today?
If eugenics is bad, how in any rational way can abortion be good?……..
Murder by any definition, or for any reason, cannot be “good”.
Just wondering…could it be that the thinking of Vermont legislature is directed toward the market potential for organs and other “parts” that could be developed should such a proposition become law? If Proposition 5 is allowed to proceed to its intended end, the blood of the innocents will be on our hands. Consider for yourselves if you can live with that. Each one reading this should be thankful that your own mother didn’t choose to “cancel” you. May God forgive us for the disregard and destruction of His most precious creations!