Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tim Kane, who is a musician from Richmond.
“Because it’s personal.”
That’s the tagline on Planned Parenthood of Vermont’s recent call to action for support of H.57, a bill that seeks to protect the reproductive rights of women in Vermont. For me the tagline rings true, as it has motivated me to “personally” weigh in on an unwinnable debate perpetuated by “choice” and “life” extremists for as long as most of us can remember. A debate that has effectively hijacked the political process for decades despite the vast majority of citizens believing that when all applicable rights are duly considered, and when reason, compassion and ethics are duly employed in the legislative process, only then are we able to enact fair, just and balanced laws. Such laws include phrases like “except in the case of” and “provided that.” Such laws that, apparently, so enrage the radical absolutists on both sides of the issue that they are willing to up their ante again with every election cycle.
Those who have not yet read the bill should do so now. It’s an easy read and if you are like me, you might read it three or four times looking for language that imposes restrictions on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. But you won’t find any “except in the case of” or “provided that” language in the bill and, again if you’re like me, you might conclude not much serious thought went into the drafting of this legislation. The bill, as written, protects a woman’s right to have an abortion at any time, for any reason. Or for no reason. That right would be protected until the birth of the child, meaning that aborting a fetus during labor, at the very end of a full term pregnancy, would be an absolute right under Vermont law if H.57 passes.
Melinda Moulton, president of the Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund and champion of H.57, recently wrote a commentary in VTDigger in support of the bill. Weaving a cautionary if not compelling tale, Moulton invites us to “go back in time 50 years ago when women did not have a legal right to choose their reproductive fate,” suggesting that passing a bill that guarantees a woman’s absolute right to obtain a full-term abortion, for any or no reason, would be a reasonable way to ensure we don’t return to a time when women enjoyed no reproductive rights. I would suggest that looking back 50 years is not instructive in this case and does not serve to illustrate any legitimate negative consequence of failure to pass H.57. To the contrary, H.57 overreaches so radically beyond the rational and ethical limits of the vast majority of our citizens that the actual consequences of enacting it are much more real and concerning than any purported “roll-back-the-clock” consequences of a failure to enact H.57.
To better understand what the actual consequences of H.57 will be, one need not travel back in time 50 years ago. One need only look at actual, present-day data compiled in Iceland and Denmark and the direct correlation between enacting such laws and the radical decline (bordering on elimination) in numbers of babies born with Down syndrome and other “abnormalities.” Perhaps a more illustrative time-travel adventure in this vein would be to go back 100 years to the dark period of the eugenics movement in Vermont.
Consideration of H.57 and its consequences becomes personal for me when I travel back in time, 95 years, to the birth of my late father. He was born with a significant deformity called hemifacial microsomia. At the time it was not possible to detect this condition in utero. After his birth, the physicians encouraged my grandmother to have my father institutionalized, as they were of the expert opinion that he would be “mentally retarded,” incapable of caring for himself or leading a “normal” life. Nana Kane gave their advice as much credence as it deserved and took my Dad home, providing him the same love and fierce devotion that she showed all of her children. My father went to school, was a standout athlete, became a mechanical engineer, coached college hockey, married and had seven children.
I am so grateful for my Nana’s strength. Fate brought my Dad into the world at a time when medical knowledge and women’s rights were woefully inadequate compared to today’s norms. I sometimes ask myself if he were conceived when H.57 was the law of the land, or if he were conceived today in Iceland, what would become of him?
I am grateful too for the strength and vitality of my wife, which she first displayed as an infant born two months premature, at a time when the odds of survival at that stage were very slim. I have great personal difficulty reconciling the vitality and will to live she displayed as a newborn with the stark language of H.57, which would protect the intentional killing of a fetus not only at two months before birth, but at two seconds before full-term birth.
Moulton asks, “What possibly could lurk in the minds of those who would want to deny a woman the right to choose their own destiny?” I would respond to Moulton’s open-ended question with a more direct, personal question. Because, as her organization’s tagline says, it’s personal. How could you, in good conscience, suggest that those who don’t endorse your absolutist, immovable position on reproductive rights “would want to deny a woman the right to choose their own destiny?”
I implore Vermont’s legislators of every stripe and our governor to reconsider their stated support of H.57. And I strongly encourage the silent majority of Vermonters who support well-reasoned and morally defensible legislation to weigh in on the current debate. Because it’s personal.
