This commentary is by Norm Vandal, a resident of Roxbury.
Voters in the town of Northfield, a place that votes for politicians more like the state of Mississippi than a small town in Vermont, surprisingly voted almost three to one in support of Article 22, an amendment to the Vermont Constitution that guarantees women the right to reproductive health care, and yet, unsurprisingly, they elected two right-wing Republicans to the Vermont House by a combined vote of 70%, one of whom is Anne Donahue.
Think about this: 75% of the voters wanted to secure women’s rights, but then 70% voted to reelect two of the very people who voted against the amendment, and one who personally fought the hardest throughout the state to take away these rights. They elected Anne Donahue once again.
Rep. Anne Donahue, along with 85% of House Republicans, voted not only against the amendment, but actually voted to deny voters the ability to vote on the constitutional amendment. Anne has long served on the House Health Care Committee, even recently as the vice chair, but here she voted to deny health care to women?
That’s not the only reason why she should not be reappointed to the committee. Anne served as the chief spokesperson for Vermonters for Good Government, the lead organization opposed to the amendment. So, she not only voted against women’s health care, but she campaigned and proselytized against it, giving speeches, appearing in the media and helping to write brochures that were distributed to churches throughout Vermont, all the while using her title as “Representative” to give her credibility.
Anne has been on the radio, in the newspapers, on the web. She has been asked to speak and to debate by various right-to-life people and groups. She has written letters and commentaries. There is no doubt that Anne Donahue is literally the Vermont face of the anti-abortion movement, all the while advocating taking women’s health care rights away.
On the Vermonters for Good Government website, Anne gives a “personal legal opinion” about the insinuated failings of the amendment, albeit an unqualified one that a plethora of qualified constitutional scholars have disagreed with.
Two of her main points are really defamatory and degrading to the health care industry at large in Vermont, and that’s the most important reason she should not be appointed.
When she insinuates that the amendment will increase late-term abortions (the Vermont Medical Society testified they are not even performed in Vermont), she is really pointing a finger at health care institutions, saying they will step up to gladly perform these abortions.
She does the same with her assertion that the health care industry will readily force practitioners and workers to perform abortions when they are morally opposed to doing so.
Both of these claims are completely unsubstantiated and misinformative, merely conjecture, but they still cast aspersions on health care in Vermont. She should be on the health care committee?
If Article 22 is to be challenged in court, it is likely that Vermonters for Good Government will be spearheading that effort, and Rep. Anne Donahue will be one of the people at the helm. Given this strong possibility, should she be on the House Health Care Committee? Really? Fighting against health care for women?
Appointing Rep. Anne Donahue to the committee would be a travesty, and I urge the speaker of the Vermont House to act responsibly and in the interest of women throughout the state. Appointing her would be a slap in the face to the vast majority of Vermonters, 76%, who voted to enshrine women’s rights to reproductive health care in the state constitution.