Vermont: Change Coming

By Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D.
NRLC Director of State Legislation

Recently, in its annual "report card," the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) gave Vermont the dubious distinction of being the most pro-abortion state in the nation. NARAL gave it a grade of "A+." Why?

Because Vermont has no protective legislation on its books. Indeed, in 1998, more than half of the abortions performed in Vermont were performed by non-physicians. According to Mary Hahn Beerworth, executive director of Vermont Right to Life, "The state reporting form indicated that these abortions were done by physician assistants, nurse practitioners, 18 'others,' and 1 'unknown'!"

Women, Beerworth noted, "make this life and death decision in an informational vacuum; there is no requirement of informed consent and minors are shuttled through an abortion facility in an assembly-line fashion without the benefit of parental guidance."

Intriguingly, according to a January 2000 Wirthlin poll, Vermonters overwhelmingly support the very laws which would provide some protection to women and girls considering abortion. The poll showed that 75% oppose the use of non-physicians to perform abortions, 82% favor informing the woman about fetal development and alternatives to abortion before going ahead with the procedure, and 72% support parental notification before performing an abortion on a daughter who is under 18.

In her press statement to the legislature this year, Beerworth sent legislators a blunt message: "After years of dealing with committees that have been stacked against us and rules of order used to thwart the pro-life effort, Vermont Right to Life has put pro-abortion Speaker of the House Michael Obuchowski and pro-abortion Governor Howard Dean on notice ­ we will not sit on the bench any longer and be marginalized by the process ­ we are off the bench, we are on the floor, and we are going for the full court press."

And that is exactly what they did. Sensing a momentum they have not enjoyed before in Vermont, right to lifers stepped up pressure on state lawmakers to consider a parental notification bill which would require abortionists to notify a parent or legal guardian 48 hours before performing an abortion on an unemancipated minor under 18 years old.

As required by various Supreme Court decisions, the bill also contained a judicial bypass which would allow a girl to petition a court for an order bypassing her parent if she could show she was either "mature" or that notification of her parent would not be in her "best interest."

The pro-lifers made sure selected members of a crucial committee were inundated with telephone calls, letters, and a radio campaign. Powerful arguments and testimony from Vermont mothers whose daughters had abortions without the parents' knowledge resulted in significant support for full House debate on the bill. (Go to "Today's News &Views"for March 13-15 to find the testimony. The address is www.nrlc.org).

The bill, however, was bottled up in the House Health and Welfare Committee which, according to Beerworth, was stacked by the majority Democrats to ensure that any pro-life legislation on abortion in Vermont would not see the light of day. When asked, House Speaker Michael Obuchowski acknowledged that, in fact, the committee was intentionally stacked. "A conscious effort was made, yes," he confirmed.

Not surprisingly, the House Health and Welfare Committee voted 7-4 to table the bill. Three days later, on March 3, during House debates regarding next year's state budget, Rep. Oreste Valsangiacomo sponsored an amendment to the budget bill that would require parental notification for Medicaid-funded abortions. The measure was easily defeated, 94-47.

Valsangiacomo did not expect to win but thought it was important to bring the issue to a floor vote. Mary Hahn Beerworth agreed with him -that a defeat on the House floor after three hours' debate did not mean defeat for the issue as a whole.

"Overall we have been very successful at getting a real debate begun over the issue of parental involvement in a minor daughter's abortion," Beerworth noted. "Ours was the second-most talked about topic in the Statehouse since January."

"We are absolutely going to be working on this issue right up until the elections this November. Parental notification is not a dead issue. We will keep going until it passes," Beerworth vowed.

Right to lifers were "signaling an end to sitting on the sideline." Pro-abortion groups got the message: The pro-life movement is a force to be reckoned with in Vermont.