A lack of consensus around fetal issues means the Vermont Senate won’t take up bills this year that could prompt reproductive freedom debates.
Sen. Richard Sears, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told his hometown newspaper, the Bennington Banner, that “I spent a lot of time in the past few days thinking about this and how to approach it. Each time I tried to find a way to deal with this bill, or bills, each time I came back with the same problem, and that is that I don’t have consensus. These types of bills need consensus to move forward. I have not seen that consensus.”
Sears had authored one of two Senate bills (S. 273) that would have provided additional penalties for assaults on pregnant women.
Action now is likely to shift to the House, where a bill (H. 605) identical to the other Senate bill (S. 175) has been filed. The bill has 55 sponsors, most of them (46) Republicans. The House leadership has shown little interest in having the bill taken up.
What’s at stake here? All of the bills contain disclaimers that they do nothing to change the legal rights of fetuses. But a debate around fetal deaths is almost certain to open a Pandora’s box that ultimately would lead to the question of a woman’s right to choose and the control she has over her own body.
As Rep. Rachel Westman said in an article last week in the Rutland Herald and Times Argus, “All these bills bring into question at what point does a woman stop having full rights as a citizen to determine medical choice. Whenever we’re talking about creating a special separate status for a fetus, when we do that we inadvertently take away some of the rights of the woman. The question is – does pregnancy make a woman less of a citizen or mean she should have less rights?”
The sad, and frustrating, thing is that the whole debate isn’t necessary. The Legislature essentially addressed the issue of fetal deaths and vehicular homicide when it amended the charge of grossly negligent operation of a vehicle in 1991. The result was to essentially broaden the offense to cover fetal deaths.
Read the ACLU’s letter to Sen. Richard Sears opposing the fetal bills.