The Vermont Senate voted for the second time last week to approve a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would enshrine abortion as a constitutional right in the state. Proposal 5 seeks to ensure abortion in Vermont remains legal and on-demand throughout pregnancy in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Proposal 5 was approved in a vote of 26 to four on April 9, and will now go to the House, although the House doesn’t plan to vote until next year. It has until the end of the 2022 legislative session to pass the amendment and if it does so, the amendment will then go before Vermont voters in the 2022 general election. The proposed amendment already received initial approval as required by both the House and the Senate in 2019 after being initiated over concerns that the Supreme Court justices appointed by the Trump Administration would use an abortion-related case in the near future to overturn Roe v. Wade.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, individual states will set their own laws regarding the legality of abortion as they did prior to the Roe ruling.
READ: DOJ sues Vermont hospital for forcing nurse to participate in elective abortion
The proposed amendment says: “That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”
However, this means that another human being’s right to life would be negated in the name of another human’s “personal reproductive autonomy.”
Three Vermont Republican senators voted against the proposal along with one Democrat. Sen. Brian Collamore (R) said the majority of constituents who had contacted him about the proposed amendment were in opposition to it.
Faith leaders in Vermont spoke out against the proposed amendment as well, stating, “We […] hold that life begins at conception, when an unborn child receives the full complement of human DNA. In fact, every embryology and fetology textbook in use today states that life begins at the instant of fusion between sperm and egg. […] This unborn baby has a fundamental right to life.”
The proposed amendment fails to make any mention at all about the preborn child, whose life is directly threatened under the guise of personal autonomy.
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