by Renee McGuinness 

A dangerous new law should raise alarms for both pro-life and pro-choice advocates. Vermonters were told passage of Article 22 would keep abortion rare, safe, and legal, yet this new law opens the floodgates to unsupervised chemical abortions, making them common and dangerous, yet still legal.

Governor Scott signed S.28 into law on May 13, 2025, and it took effect immediately.

While provisions under S.28 are flagrant violations of medical standards of care, speech rights, and states’ rights, the focus here is on a provision of the law that allows providers to use on-line questionnaires to prescribe medical abortions without requiring patient-provider interaction.

To clarify, medical abortions are prescribed when a patient is already pregnant, and should not be confused with Plan B, which is taken after unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy.

Two witness testimonies expose medical abortion prescribed via telemedicine as a modern-day, legalized coat hanger under S.28.

First, Dr. Linda Prine, who prescribes 50 – 60 medical abortions via telemedicine per day and is Co-founder of M + A Hotline (Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline) and the founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, provided witness testimony on S.28 to the House Committee on Health Care on March 27 (@25:15). Dr. Prine erroneously informed the Committee that the WHO sets the gestational limit at 13 weeks (it’s 12 weeks), and that, “We don’t send the pills after thirteen weeks, although there are community organizations – sort of semi-underground community groups that send them later in pregnancy because people are just that desperate, but mostly a procedure is recommended if it’s after thirteen weeks.”

Dr. Prine’s statement did not prompt discussion by Committee members on whether to add language to S.28 to include safeguards that would limit dispensing chemical abortion pills up to 12 weeks gestation to ensure the WHO’s standard of care is upheld.

Second, David Herlihy, Executive Director of the Vermont Board of Medical Practice, testified to the House Committee on Health Care on April 1^st. Herlihy requested on behalf of the Board (beginning @9:20) to remove the provision that allows medical abortion pills to be prescribed via a telemedicine questionnaire without requiring communication between the patient and the prescriber.

Medical abortion is now the only procedure prescribed via telemedicine in Vermont that does not require patient-prescriber interaction prior to fulfilling the prescription. (A requirement under 26 V.S.A.  §1354(A)(33)(A) adopted in 2011, when events reviewed by the Board revealed that standards for prescribing medications via telemedicine were necessary.}

Herlihy stated during his testimony that bots are prescribing medical abortions through on-line questionnaires: “We ask you to consider: is it good practice for somebody to get a prescription based only on a bot?”

Several committee members mischaracterized the Board’s recommendation as an attack on women’s health care, and ultimately rejected the medical board’s written recommendation.

Nationally, RFK Jr. has requested the FDA conduct a complete review of mifepristone based upon the Ethics and Public Policy Center  (EPPC)  study released in April. The EPPC study shows mifepristone risks are 22 times higher than the FDA claims. Nearly 11% of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhage, hospitalization, or other serious adverse event within 45 days of taking the abortion drugs.

Vermont’s elected officials failed to consider the EPPC’s study when they passed S.28 out of the legislature and signed it into law.

Article 22 was sold to the public as a state constitutional amendment necessary to keep abortion safe and legal; yet without provisions to determine gestational age or ectopic pregnancy, and without patient-provider interaction, medical abortions prescribed via telemedicine are a modern-day equivalent to the coat hanger under S.28.

This author lives in Addison County.