MONTPELIER (LifeSiteNews) — Vermont’s liberal Republican Gov. Phil Scott on Wednesday signed two bills to further establish the Green Mountain State as a haven for unregulated abortion and mutilating transgender interventions. The laws, which contrast sharply with measures in other states to prohibit abortions and harmful gender procedures, are slated to take effect in September.
Signed May 10, House Bill 89 and its companion Senate Bill 37 will further bolster the state’s legislative protections for both abortion and transgender interventions, defining “legally protected health care activity to include reproductive health care services and gender-affirming health care [sic].”
Crafted in opposition to conservative measures in other states banning abortions and transgender interventions, the bills will explicitly set up legal protections for physicians and patients who offer or obtain abortions and transgender drugs and surgeries. Protections are extended to people who travel to Vermont from out of state to obtain abortions or transgender procedures.
The bills have drawn enthusiastic support from LGBT advocates “as one of the nation’s most comprehensive transgender and reproductive health care packages,” the Hill reported.
In a Wednesday statement, Vermont’s liberal Republican governor, who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, characterized the bills as defending “autonomy” and “liberty.”
“Today, we reaffirm once again that Vermont stands on the side of privacy, personal autonomy and reproductive liberty, and that providers are free to practice without fear,” said Gov. Scott, who also signed a radical bill in 2019 protecting nearly unlimited abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy and last year put his signature to an amendment enshrining a “right” to abortion into the Vermont state constitution.
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Wednesday’s legislation will also set the stage to penalize pro-life pregnancy centers by opening them up to prosecution according to state statutes prohibiting false or misleading advertising, VT Digger reported. Pro-abortion activists and politicians often allege that pro-life pregnancy centers — which provide expectant mothers with psychological and spiritual resources, as well as ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, and needed supplies, including formula, diapers, and strollers — are “fake clinics” that “lie” to mothers experiencing crisis pregnancies by not promoting the murder of their preborn babies.
In addition, HB 89 and SB 37 are also the first bills of their kind in the nation to explicitly contain protections for chemical abortion drugs even if the lethal drugs lose their U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization. An ongoing case currently working its way through the courts could lead to the revocation of FDA approval for the lethal pill mifepristone, the first drug in the so-called “gold standard” chemical abortion regimen.
Mifepristone works by depriving the growing infant of needed progesterone, effectively starving him to death. It’s generally combined with the follow-up drug misoprostol, which induces labor to deliver the deceased infant. Chemical abortions account for over half of all abortions committed nationwide.
Vermont is attempting to protect access to mifepristone even if the FDA is forced to withdraw its approval of the drug by declaring in law that “reproductive health care services” includes “medication that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for termination of a pregnancy as of January 1, 2023, regardless of the medication’s current FDA approval status,” the AP reported.
It’s unclear whether Vermont would be successful in preserving access to mifepristone, though.
Abortion law expert Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, told the AP that states are not permitted to authorize medications that are prohibited by the federal government.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the future legality of mifepristone is in the hands of the courts following a November lawsuit alleging that the FDA had inappropriately fast-tracked its approval of the drug in 2000. The case doesn’t hinge on the ethics of the abortion pill or the nature of abortion itself, but rather the regulatory process that led to the drug’s entrance onto the market over two decades ago.
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The FDA has claimed its approval was appropriate and that a court decision opposing its greenlighting of mifepristone could create issues with pharmaceutical companies trusting FDA approvals in future.
In early April, a federal judge in Texas issued an order that would have suspended distribution of the abortion drug nationwide, but it was immediately met with a counter-ruling from a judge in Washington state who ordered the drugs remain available in multiple states. Days later, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay filed by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting that the drugs remain temporarily available pending ongoing litigation, but upholding the pause on distribution of the pills via mail.
On April 21, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 7-2 ruling preserving access to mifepristone while the legal challenge against the FDA approval of the drug continues to work its way through the federal court system.
Even with the recent setback from the nation’s highest court, pro-lifers have emphasized that the battle to protect pre-born babies from chemical as well as surgical abortions is far from over.
Meanwhile, The Hill pointed out that Scott isn’t the first Republican governor to sign legislation safeguarding abortion and transgender interventions. As LifeSiteNews reported at the time, former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker gave his signature to similar legislation last year.