Statehouse Headliners: UVM abortions, unisex bathrooms, Mexican drug cartels, and Vermont stone for Trump wall

By Guy Page

More than 1,000 people have signed an online petition opposing elective abortions at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

The petition — as of June 7 totaling 1,057 and rising — is just one of many expressions of grassroots outrage over the 2017 decision which, in effect, makes workers at Vermont’s largest (6,405 employees) employer complicit in abortions. One employee told Headliners week the hospital often performs as many as five abortions per day. Many administrative and housecleaning workers now must do work that enables the performing of abortions in hospital operating rooms, the employee said.

“Ladies in my office are crying, literally shaking at the new volumes of terminations that we have to process and take the calls for,” the employee said. “It’s too much!”

Several opponents of the new policy hope to share their concerns face-to-face with trustees. The hospital board of trustees will hold a public meeting at 2 pm June 21 in the Mary Fletcher Meeting Room including a 20-minute “public session, in which the public is given an opportunity for comment,” Board chair Allie Stickney states on the board website.  A strong, vocal turnout may be likely, if the comments on the petition are any indication. For example:

  • “Shame, shame on UVMMC, you should be absolutely AGAINST murdering innocent infants.”
  • “If the administration and staff of UVMMC consider murder and harvesting of body parts to be proper medical care, then I can never use nor support this facility for any of my own nor my family members’ health care.”
  • “It appalls me that the same hospital that delivered my beautiful 4 month old baby now wants to take part in aborting pre-born babies. If UVM does indeed take part in abortion, I will cease using their services.”

The board’s decision, made without any public input by a board led by former Planned Parenthood official Stickney, also drew the ire of about 30 legislators who in May sent letters of protest to President/ COO Eileen Whalen and President/CEO John Brumsted.

Transgender bathroom activist says unisex, multi-stall bathrooms are inevitable – Act 127, unisex single-stall public restrooms, was signed last month by Gov. Phil Scott. Headliners last week asked a leading transgender activist if her movement has multi-stall unisex public bathrooms on its agenda.  No, she said, there is no planned progression, but it will probably happen anyway. Planners of large public buildings will choose the “economy of scale” cost savings of large, unisex bathrooms over the current practice of building two smaller, gender-specific facilities, she said. It should be noted however that building privacy stalls around every urinal – as required in the secure unisex public bathroom of tomorrow – will require more materials, space and construction time.

Mexican drug cartels grow black market marijuana in “pot legal” Colorado, California – Mexican drug cartels are bypassing the U.S. southern border by growing marijuana in “legal” U.S. states like Colorado and California and moving it easily across state lines through the country, according a CBC news report.

“Colorado has basically become the marijuana capital of the United States,” A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) official said. “You find drug trafficking organizations [tied to Mexican cartels] moving here, setting up shop in Colorado and sending it back to their home states where they can sell it at incredible profit.” Until recently, Mexican drug cartels controlling the U.S. marijuana market have been forced to penetrate the U.S. southern border and its often porous but still formidable defenses of man-made walls, mountains, rivers, guarded ports of entry, and the U.S. Border Patrol. Now, thanks to several “legal” states, the narco-lords are growing huge quantities of black market marijuana in “legal” states like Colorado and California. Once harvested, it is easily, cheaply transported to big city distribution centers, from whence it finds its way to the small dealers and towns of states like Vermont. Production is easier, too.  The cartels hire illegal immigrants, paying low wages and threatening death for them and their families if they refuse. Local and state law enforcement are too overwhelmed with other needs. Pro-legalization state government may not look too closely at this unexpected exploitation of a state law that was, after all, expected to reduce the black market.

On July 1, cultivation of small amounts of marijuana will be legal in Vermont. Furthermore, powerful legislators and our lieutenant governor are pushing for legalized commercial cultivation, a la Colorado and California. Meanwhile our law enforcement agencies were forbidden by law last year to cooperate with the federal 287-C program that deports illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.  With our  pot-friendly, illegal-immigration friendly laws and officials, Vermonters shouldn’t be surprised if the cartels purchase and operate “grows” across the Green Mountain State.

Vermont businessman supports Trump Wall, offers assistance – And speaking of the southern border – a Vermont stone fabricator  who is the son and grandson of immigrants has offered President Donald Trump assistance with building – or at least adorning – the proposed wall along the Mexico/U.S. border.
According to the May 10 Herald of Randolph, Paul Thompson, owner of Vermont Marble, Granite, Slate and Soapstone, has offered to donate $80,000 of “verde antique” stone quarried in Rochester . Verde antique is dark green with veining of light green and white. It is often mistaken for marble but is in fact serpentine, a much harder substance.

Thompson would fashion 2,000 square feet of the stone into 4 inch by 4 inch medallions, which could be installed on every 10th segment of the wall, adding beauty and ‘a touch of hope’ for all would-be immigrants, the Herald reports. His father and maternal grandparents are immigrants and he is pro-immigration, he said. His business has a Castleton mailing address and a showroom in nearby Whitehall, New York.

“It would be an honor to donate something so very beautiful and God-given to enhance the wall’s look with something so natural and spectacular. … The medallions will represent a small window, a window of opportunity for those that truly do want to come to the great land of America, and hopefully some day become legal citizens,” Thompson proposed, according to the Mountain Times, a Rutland County weekly newspaper.

Johnson is a Brooklyn native who graduated from Johnson State College and opened the business in 2000. It now has seven full-time employees, according to a trade publication, the Slippery Rock Gazette.

Statehouse Headliners is intended primarily to educate, not advocate. It is e-mailed to an ever-growing list of interested Vermonters, public officials and media. Guy Page is affiliated with the Vermont Energy Partnership; the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare; and Physicians, Families and Friends for a Better Vermont.

Image courtesy of Michael Bielawski/TNR

4 thoughts on “Statehouse Headliners: UVM abortions, unisex bathrooms, Mexican drug cartels, and Vermont stone for Trump wall

  1. If you’re a supporter of Black Lives Matter and aren’t out in the street protesting UVM now joining the chain of abortion providers since Roe V Wade in snuffing out over 19 million black lives you should be. Instead of worrying about trigger words worry about ignoring that. Ask questions like is PP outsourcing it’s abortion hegemony to UVM so they can be positioned to continue recommending one of their short list of “choices” when fed funding dries up? Imagine the hypocrisy of our eventual sole provider of “health care” with the primary first rule statement of “do no harm“ extinguishing 5 human beings a day. All lives matter and UVM should be appalled at what they’ve allowed to happen under their noses.

  2. Ho hum, just another wasted day in Montpelier. Not to worry, they’ll all be back next year.

  3. The cartels should stay south of the NE Kingdom, unless they want to be targets. There will be some dead drug ‘growers’ if they show up here. That’s a promise.

  4. In this day and age with all the ” contraceptives ” on the market, if you get knocked up
    well, your an Idiot.

    I know there are certain circumstances that this procedure is needed but this is a rarity,
    not a luxury !!

    And now the UVMMC has jumped on the liberal bandwagon that life has no value
    only a profit …………. Pretty Shameful.

    The board of Directors should all be fired, Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, yeah
    yeah , I know it has No legal status, an Oath is an Oath !!

    HYPOCRITES ……………….

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