|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Similar 2023 bill now in Federal court
Photo from Alliance Defending Freedom
By Michael Bielawski
A new Senate bill that would protect “access to certain legally protected health care services” is in the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. It would put restrictions on what “limited-service pregnancy centers” – which are generally known as pregnancy resources centers that don’t offer abortions – can say to the public.
Vermont’s pregnancy resource centers are typically privately-funded an staffed by pro-life Vermonters who provide counseling, ultrasounds, pregnancy care, and necessities such as maternity clothing and diapers.
“This bill proposes to expand the prohibition on untrue or misleading advertising by a limited-services pregnancy center under the Consumer Protection Act to apply to any untrue or misleading advertising about health care services,” it states. It apparently seeks to expand on and clarify restrictions of a similar 2023 law now being challenged in federal court by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
S. 28‘s lead sponsors are Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addiso and Sen. Virginia “Ginny” Lyons, D-Chittenden, and four more senators signed onto it. All are women and Democrats.
The bill continues, “It would eliminate specific responsibility for licensed health care providers who provide services at a limited-services pregnancy center for the services provided at the center and would remove language indicating that failure to ensure those services are conducted in accordance with the law could constitute unprofessional conduct.”
Advertising by these limited pregnancy centers could be restricted in the statements they could make.
“Advertising strategies and educational information about health care options that lack transparency, use misleading or ambiguous terminology, misrepresent or obfuscate services provided, or provide factually inaccurate information are a form of manipulation that disrespects individuals, undermines trust, broadens health disparity, and can result in patient harm,” it states.State lawsuit concerning prior legislation
The organization Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit in 2023 on behalf of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates and two pregnancy care centers, the suit was targeting the states for allegedly unconstitutionally restricting the centers’ speech and services.
ADF Legal Counsel Julia Payne said in a statement, “Vermont’s law [S. 37 or Act 15], however, does the opposite—it impedes women’s ability to receive critical services during a difficult time in their lives and suppresses the free-speech rights of faith-based pregnancy centers. Pregnancy centers should be free to serve women and offer the support they need without fear of unjust government punishment.”
He further wrote, “There are no stated examples of pregnancy service centers actually lying to women. The chief complaint is that the centers are not more open about their ideological views.”Health care providers disciplined?
It is widely believed that the new legislation, S. 28, would expand on the powers of Act 15 to restrict statements by the non-abortion pregnancy centers. Political commentator and former gubernatorial candidate Jon Klar wrote for True North Reports in 2023 that “S.37 includes a new provision to restrict so-called pregnancy services center fraud. The bill seeks to ban “unfair and deceptive acts” by such centers — presumably, this is to compel pregnancy centers to clearly state that they do not support or offer abortion services.”
The new bill states that in some scenarios, a nurse or doctor associated with the center could be disciplined or lose his/her license.
“The Board may deny an application for licensure, renewal, or reinstatement or may revoke, suspend, or otherwise discipline an advanced practice registered nurse upon due notice and opportunity for hearing if the person engages in the following conduct,” it states.
It further notes that if a doctor takes any unapproved steps to confirm that the patient indeed wants the medical service, that would be grounds to get a provider closed down.
Actions that specifically would not be punishable under this new law – and would never happen anyway at a RPC – include “prescribing medication for an individual to terminate the individual’s pregnancy based on an adaptive questionnaire that allows the licensee to obtain additional medical history and ask follow-up questions as needed.”
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Legislation, Life&Death
Censorship is key in Vermont.
Here they are openly passing bills against business and organizations for advertising their viewpoints or products.
What type of government specializes in that? Great question for Guy and Michael, to ask in person to all those under the golden dome.
So, will “Planned Parenthood” be prosecuted for having “parenthood” in the name when that is actually the opposite of the main service they provide? If not, why not?
I’ve always thought that they should be called “Unplanned parenthood” because thats when you see them…
Does Planned Parenthood offer adoption services? If not, should they not also be labeled as a “limited service pregnancy center”?
Oh look, Lyin’ Lyons and Hardy-Har-Har! What a shocker!
I do hope Vermonters are watching how these toxic tyrants prioritize their personal ideological moral crusade above reducing taxes and helping Vermonters. They seem to think our legislature is their cult platform.
If this blatantly unconstitutional law is enacted, it will be challenged in federal court as an infringement of the First Amendment. Vermont taxpayers will foot the bill for Charity Clark and our AG to squander resources defending an offensive assault on our liberties in the name of “misinformation.” I’m impressed that Lyons and Hardy can be so utterly tone-deaf to citizens’ needs as well as basic constitutional liberties (that I thought they had taken an oath to preserve). Impressed the way I’m impressed when a chicken’s head is cut off and it keeps running around as if it doesn’t know it’s brainless.
Vermont’s pregnancy centers are there to help women who want to keep their babies but lack emotional support, housing, and basic needs like bottles, diapers, and formula. Planned Parenthood does not offer those services, while claiming it is helping poor women avoid the economic struggles of rearing a child.
Where is Charity Clark to oppose this grotesque legislation as unconstitutional? A grade schooler can understand the First Amendment these people are violating.
The totalitarian toxicity of those who feign tolerance while undermining the young, often desperate women they exploit for money is simply disgusting.
As GK Chesterton observed, “Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything.” I believe in helping young mothers in need, and allowing Vermonters the right to speak freely. I’m growing intolerant of assaults on basic free speech liberties by thugs!
100 % John! It is definitely unconstitutional. These ungodly people are becoming unhinged. That’s all they have left. Vermont needs to be “cleaned up” and will be soon!
Thank you, John Klar, for your tireless work and for speaking the truth on behalf of the babies, moms, dads, and families who are being targeted by the insanely evil policies of those, like Charity Clark and the aforementioned legislators, who walk in deception. It is truly they who are themselves deceived and are de diving others.
What we are witnessing here is the full flowering of the demonic seeds planted on our culture in 1973 when SCOTUS invented out of thin air a “right” to murder preborn babies.
It is actually PP and abortionists who are deceiving moms and dads and lying to them when they proclaim that their babies are only “pregnancy tissue,” “potential life,” and “clumps of cells.” They are practicing deception when they minimize to these women the horrifying and devastating effects of the chemical abortion pill.
Thank God for the Alliance Defending Freedom who has gone to bat in court for Vermont PRCs to expose this devilish plan to gaslight PRCs and shut off the free, truthful, compassionate services they provide every day for babies, moms, dads, and families.
Please support your local PRC financially, and volunteer with your time and efforts. Please support the ADF who fights on behalf of our constitutional rights to life, liberty, and free speech in the USA and Vermont.
Pray to end abortion here in Vermont and in the United States. Pray for funding for PP to dry up, see their abortion facilities close, and put an end to this hellish, eugenicist organization. Pray for abortion to become unthinkable, and for all life to be respected and protected in a culture of true love and compassion, not the wicked counterfeit of them.
UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
The modus operandi of the DNC/Prog Soros & Son funded brigade should be obvious to everyone by now. Lawfare warfare all paid and bought for deeds done dirty – eugenists globalist annihilists. Here’s an idea – why not plant a flag on the State House lawn for every death caused by abortion, assisted suicide, drug overdoses, and murders in the State for the past say, four years? Stacking the actual bodies on the steps would be the most stunning evidence, yet that would be messy – they don’t like messy, they want it hidden and buried by the next crisis. Show the fruits of their labor for all to see the actual number of lives wiped by their democracy.
Doesn’t the Vermont State House have legal counsel that has knowledge of the Constitution? I understand that voters are responsible for vetting candidates for basic intelligence but someone in the State House should have common sense to instruct Representatives and Senators to avoid the cost of litigation.
Communists are not interested in avoiding litigation. They pursue their goals by any means possible, including violating the US Constitution. Legislative counsel keep their heads low and collect their paycheck.
Everyone who’s saying this is correct. Planned Parenthood basically does zero full-term / actual birthing service. It’s all contraceptive, abortive, STD care and regular gynecological exams. It’s actually anti-parenthood. It’s incredibly misleading, and they definitely push their own ideological agenda. They should be as subject to this law as an actual pregnancy care center would be.
@S.Lowry – I’ve been thinking the same thing: They do not help people with parenthood, they only help with preventing parenthood. Take a look at our birth rates, and you will see the end result of this publically funded quasi government branch. This is one of the places where the Eugenics advocates from the 50’s and 60’s landed. They are unscrupulous, to say the least.
@Renee McGuinness – correct. sad thing is, those in support of this sort of thing can’t even recognize they have been duped
@Joan Dunlap – correct. If enacted, the law would violate the 1st amendment of the US Constitution, but also Vermont’s own Article 22, lovingly supported by those duped into voting yes on it: “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…”
The “STATE” will need to demonstrate compelling interest if they decide to pass this law. Although Article 22 was designed exactly for this purpose of population control with the phrase “…Unless justified by a compelling State interest…” It is mind-blowing that people could not use their brains to think about what that phrase means before they voted yes. Girls are easy to dupe, apparently, and they believed all the lies saying the state would not get involved with reproductive rights…
whelp, here comes the state, getting involved in reproductive freedoms…