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The Vermont bill, aimed at providing some of the strongest protections for abortion rights in the nation, came as crowds of supporters for such rights gathered Tuesday outside statehouses and on the steps of the Supreme Court to protest abortion bans like Alabama’s.
In Vermont, the bill would prohibit the government from interfering in any way with the right to have an abortion. It would not change the status quo in Vermont, where there are no legal limits on when or under what circumstances a woman can decide to end a pregnancy. But supporters say that the bill sends a resonant message to the nation about Vermont’s views on abortion rights just as other states are sending far different signals.
As conservatives in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri race to pass some of the strictest limits on abortions in decades, a pushback is developing as well. In Democratic-held or Democratic-leaning states, abortion rights supporters who are alarmed by the new laws and by the threat represented by a more conservative Supreme Court are trying to repeal abortion restrictions or limit the government’s say over women’s reproductive decisions.
“In this time when, across the country and nationally, when Roe v. Wade and individuals’ access to private, reliable reproductive health care and abortion is in question, we thought we’d better be clear in Vermont,” said Ann Pugh, a state representative from South Burlington and one of the Vermont bill’s lead sponsors.
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Mallory Quigley, vice president of communications for Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, said that bills limiting abortion introduced in states this year far outnumbered abortion rights measures, and noted that Democratic efforts to pass laws strengthening abortion rights had failed or stalled in some places.
“This legislation that’s being advocated to take away any existing protections for unborn children has been too extreme even for some of the Democrat base,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.