By Guy Page
A Senate bill due to be voted out of the Senate Health & Welfare Committee Wednesday would require Medicaid and all other health insurance plans provide free abortions for all.
S37, titled “access to legally protected health care activity [i.e. abortion and transgender services] and regulation of health care providers,” gives force of law to several other items on the longtime ‘wish list’ of the Vermont abortion providers like Planned Parenthood of New England, including:
100% private and public health insurance coverage of abortions. “A health insurance plan [including Medicaid] shall provide coverage for abortion and abortion-related care” that “shall not be subject to any co-payment, deductible, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing requirement or additional charge.”
No suing abortion or transgender service providers. Such lawsuits are punishable as “abusive litigation.”
Suing crisis pregnancy centers for alleged false advertising – While abortion providers are fully-funded and shielded from legal action, crisis pregnancy services may be sued by the state Attorney General for advertising. “It is an unfair and deceptive act for any limited-services pregnancy center to disseminate any advertising about the services performed at that center if the management of the center knows or, by the exercise of reasonable care, ought to know it it untrue or clearly designed to mislead the public about the nature of services provided.”
No professional discipline against abortion/transgender providers. “No health care provider shall be subject to professional disciplinary action by a board or the Director solely for providing or assisting in the provision of legally protected health care activity.
Planned Parenthood has long claimed that crisis pregnancy centers tell prospective clients they offer abortions, even though the centers’ websites specifically say they neither counsel nor perform abortions.
Renee McGuinness from Vermont Family Alliance (VFA) testified Tuesday, Feb. 21 against S.37 before the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, citing potential negative health outcomes by codifying exclusively gender-affirming care and excluding any other types of care.
Raising up gender-affirming care and excluding other types of care violates promises made before the Article 22 statewide referendum last November, McGuinness said.
“The Vermont State legislature is inconsistent in their pursuit of health care choice for individuals, free from government interference,” McGuinness stated. “Last year, legislators claimed Article 22, the reproductive liberty amendment to the State Constitution, would keep government out of decision-making between patients and their doctors.
“This year, S.37 and H.89 propose to codify gender-affirming care as the only type of care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria and incongruence that will be shielded from ‘abusive litigation’ from other states, the only type of care that will be fully funded by insurance companies – making gender-affirming care a priority over all other types of healthcare – and shields practitioners from increases in malpractice premiums,” McGuinness explained. “Meanwhile countries in Europe are now reassessing and changing their standards of care due to negative impacts of exclusively gender-affirming care.”
Vermont Right to Life said the bill’s heavy emphasis on abortion services at colleges violates Article 22.
S.37 is unconstitutionally biased in favor of abortion by requiring UVM and the Vermont State Colleges to develop an ‘abortion services readiness plan,’ rather than an ‘abortion and pregnancy services readiness plan,’” Executive Director Mary Beerworth told the committee Tuesday.
“Our state has just been through the process to amend our constitution, to protect not only abortion, but also the right to carry a pregnancy to term. I hope this committee will take steps to make sure that those who wish to parent or make an adoption plan are provided as much support as those students seeking abortion,” Beerworth said.
She then showed the committee university handbooks showing plans for all reproductive choices.
Categories: Legislation
Tough to tell if this was another ” banana’s column ” or a real legislative option?
WTH?????????? Again, legislator loons: Women do not become pregnant without their free will or “CHOICE” (as you like to term it) well over 99% of the time. Neither are female humans capable of parthenogenesis.
People reap what they sow. WHY should I ultimately pay for someone else’s abortion? Oh…..that’s right, “socialism”. See ya, Vermont…..eventually there will be no one here remaining to pay for your endless social & “antisocial” programs!
Never saw this many people so obsessed with death all in one place – other than at a funeral. You people need help.
You know you can dial 988, correct? Do so.
For a law requiring public funding for abortions to be fair and equitable, the service must be available to women, men and all the other in-between genders. Fortunately, now that we recognize that men and some of the other genders can become pregnant, that equity exists, social justice is served and all Vermonters can beam with pride over what we have voted for…
No wonder why our legislature voted in free healthcare for themselves. Health care premiums and costs will be going through the roof in this state as tax payers are forced to pay for abortions and gender affirming care, including sex change operations for adults and minors.
Wanton genocide.
not with my money. no way in hell.
it’s as if they just like to poke Vermont citizens in the eye every chance they get. These Marxists operate with impunity and know that they are free to do as they please. There are apparently no consequences from the law and from the ballot box for their actions. Sorry Vermonters, you are at least 2-3, maybe 4 generations away from freeing yourselves of the Marxist and cult-like control that permeates Vermont society. It really is tragic.
S37 is a terrible bill. Too many Vermonters are going without routine medical care because they can’t afford the co-pays or deductibles. It is insulting to favor abortion and gender affirming care over all other health problems. Abortions and gender affirming care are both electives by choice.
Even though I’m against baby killing, I wish these senators parents had gotten an abortion
Reproductive Freedom”…”Health Care rights”… This is some of the new language use we’ve developed to validate the killing of our unwanted prenatal children and normalizing it as simply taking care of our medical needs. We’ve acquiesced in an ever expanding government managing our health care and we’ve invented a retroactive dimension to this “Reproductive Freedom”. Once we’ve exercised that constitutionally protected “right” we can now go back and eliminate whatever we’ve produced by the exercise of that freedom…and that’s just “health care”…corrective elimination. Does Logic suggest that the male implements used to produce this unintended outcome will also be subjected to the corrective elimination powers unleashed by this new freedom? Maybe it’s a stretch but there appears to be some precedent here: our discussions about shootings focus on implements…aren’t we trying to eliminate guns/bullets etc. to correct for unwanted outcomes? This “implements of unwanted conceiving” may be a whole new arena for legislative consideration.