Two amendments to the Vermont Constitution — one in favor of abortion rights, another prohibiting slavery and indentured servitude in any form — have been scheduled for a vote in the Vermont Senate.
The five-member Senate Rules Committee, which makes decisions on the Senate’s operating guidelines, voted unanimously Tuesday to schedule floor votes for both amendments Friday, April 9.
During the 2019-20 biennium, the Vermont Senate and House of Representatives approved both amendments to the Vermont Constitution, but that was only the first step in a three-step process for amending the constitution. By law, proposed amendments need to be approved in back-to-back legislative bienniums before they can be placed on the ballot for voters to decide.
The amendments will now sit on the Senate action calendar for six legislative days before the upper chamber can take up the proposals.
At the rules committee meeting, Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windsor, thanked the lawmakers who crafted the constitutional amendments last session.
“Both of these proposals have strong, bipartisan support in the Senate,” Balint said in a statement later Tuesday. “They help better ensure essential liberties for Vermonters and enshrine our shared values of freedom and justice. We look forward to taking this next step to strengthen our state constitution.”
In April 2019, the Senate gave overwhelming approval to the constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights in Vermont. The vote was 28-2 to move Proposal 5 to the House.
In full, the amendment reads: “That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”
The measure was introduced over concerns about political and judicial changes at the federal level, including the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawmakers worry that new conservative members of the nation’s highest court could reverse the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in 1973.
A month later, the House voted 106-38 in favor of the constitutional amendment on reproductive health.
Then in January 2020, the Senate approved the second constitutional change, 28-1. It clarifies that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited “in any form.” The House then passed it, 145-0.
The amendment clarifies current language so that Article One, Section One of the Vermont Constitution would read as follows: “That all persons are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; therefore slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.”
If the Senate and the House both approve the measures again, the amendments will go on the November 2022 election ballot for Vermont voters to decide whether to adopt them.
Before the 2021 legislative session, Balint said action on the constitutional amendments would have to wait until the Senate had dealt with urgent Covid-19 issues.“We do not want to be distracted from the immediate response,” she told VTDigger in December 2020.
