By Guy Page

Democrat leaders’ caterwauling about a Vermont Right to Life seminar reveals two things:

1. Planned Parenthood owns the leadership of the Vermont Legislature, and
2. The state’s largest abortion provider fears Vermont health care workers will demand conscience protection. 

Normally, the press doesn’t print stories about continuing education of doctors and nurses because, who cares? But this approved Oct. 2 seminar is different. It examines abortion from a pro-life position. Specifically, it includes a class educating health care providers about their obligations to Hippocrates and rights under the U.S. Constitution when both are threatened by proposed VT Constitutional Amendment 5, which may well go before Vermont voters in November 2022. 

Prop 5’s  absolutist, universal but-me-no-buts declaration of abortion as a constitutional right would likely put pro-life doctors and nurses in the untenable situation of saying no to a patient’s ‘civil right.’  Just as you can’t say no to serving minorities at a lunch counter (good), you apparently can’t decline to bake a cake for a gay wedding (hmmm), you – if Prop 5 passes – probably could not say no to participating in an abortion – all because The Constitution Says So.

In an attempt to educate health care providers of conscience on this difficult issue, Vermont Right to Life on October 2 will host a “A Life Symposium:  Understanding the issues impacting human life at the crossroads of law, medicine, and your community.” The seminar is approved by the UVM School of Medicine for continuing ed credit health care professionals need to retain their licenses. 

This seminar’s very existence has Vermont’s Planned Parenthood-approved legislative leadership downright tizzified. 

As reported in Seven Days, Senate Pro-Tem Becca Balint (D-Windham) is aghast about a seminar entitled ‘The Case Against Proposal 5’: 

“That’s a political discussion,” Balint said. “That is not a discussion for medical professionals doing their job.”

Sen. Balint, you’re so wrong. This isn’t about politics. It’s about the future of Vermont healthcare. 

If Prop 5 passes, hundreds of pro-life nurses and other hospital workers will likely face a choice: cover their hands with innocent blood, or quit. One nurse forced to participate in an abortion at UVMMC has already quit. And left Vermont. In Prop 5’s wake hundreds will follow, and who will replace them? It’s like a government-induced forerunner of the Rapture. While the pro-abortion zealots say ‘good riddance,’ health care delivery will suffer for those of us Left Behind. 

And it’s about the right to say no to providing morally repellent reproductive surgery. This is a lesson the Vermont Legislature says it has learned. Just this year the Vermont Legislature passed JRH2, a long overdue mea culpa about its active role in decades of sterilizing minorities and others deemed “unfit” to procreate. Were doctors and nurses back then free to say no and keep their jobs? If not, they should have been. And they should be now. 

Balint isn’t the only selective amnesiac. Outspoken, influential Vermont Senator Kesha Ram (D-Chittenden) tweeted images of the seminar flyer September 17 and virtue signaled, “I have a hard time believing these are acceptable.”

Ram’s legislative bio proudly states she has been a member of the board of Planned Parenthood of New England. Balint’s bio states she “led the caucus through a successful fight for the most progressive reproductive freedom legislation in the nation” – a reference to 2019’s H57, similar in language to Prop 5. Not surprisingly, the Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund publicly endorsed Balint before the 2020 election. 

When you are Planned Parenthood, you don’t need to look hard to find a lawmaker who will say what you want them to say. You just start at the top. Balint is the leader of the Senate – Vermont’s version of Sen. Chuck Schumer of NY. Over in the house, Vermont’s Nancy Pelosi is former Planned Parenthood lobbyist and vice-president Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington).

A quick glance at many biographies of legislative leadership and committee chairs shows a similar symbiosis between them and Planned Parenthood. In the words of Alexander Haig, “I am in control.”

But might does not make right. In time, its misuse brings public shame. Its leaders should reflect on the advice they gave themselves this February when they passed JRH2:  “the legacy of the eugenics movement continues to influence some of Vermont’s current policies and legislation.” 

One such legacy can be found in the life’s work of an influential advocate for Vermont eugenics –  Margaret Sanger, best known as the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Sanger planted the seed of legalized abortion. Balint, Ram and Krowinski – and many others – guard the monstrous tree it has become.