Vermont Passes Constitutional Amendment Legalizing Killing Babies in Abortions Up to Birth

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Vermont Passes Constitutional Amendment Legalizing Killing Babies in Abortions Up to Birth

LifeNews |  Nov 9, 2022 
Montpelier, Vermont


Aborting viable, late-term unborn babies for any reason is now a “right” in the Vermont Constitution.

On Tuesday, state voters approved Proposal 5, a pro-abortion constitutional amendment, on the ballot by a massive margin, with 72 percent in favor, the VT Digger reports. According to election results, 22 percent voted against the amendment and 6 percent did not vote.

Most expected the amendment to pass in the deeply Democratic state. Abortions already are legal for basically any reason up to birth in Vermont, but the amendment will stop the state legislature from enacting any limits in the future.

“We knew it was an uphill battle to actually be able to successfully share the truth of what the ramifications of this amendment would be,” said Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who opposed the amendment. “I still believe that if Vermonters really understood the implications, they would not have supported it.”

Polls consistently show that a strong majority of Americans oppose late-term abortions, but the amendment did not make it clear to voters that it will allow late-term abortion on demand.

It states, “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.”

Disturbingly, state Democrat leaders “roared and whooped” for joy late Tuesday after learning that Vermont will continue to allow abortions up to birth.

Here’s more from the report:

The amendment had the full-throated support of the Vermont Democratic Party and its most high-profile officeholders and candidates, who, like their national counterparts, sought to make abortion a top issue in this election. At the party’s election night party at Hula in Burlington, the room roared and whooped after party chair Anne Lezak announced the amendment’s passage minutes after 9 p.m.

“So many of you stepped up and knocked on doors and went to rallies and contributed and talked to your neighbors and made sure that people were not bamboozled by the ridiculous falsehoods we heard,” Lezak said. “And this just makes me very, very proud of all of us.”

The Vermont Right to Life Committee and state Catholic leaders spent months warning voters about how extreme the amendment will be, according to the Catholic News Agency.

This amendment “promises to enshrine unlimited, unregulated abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy in our state’s founding document” and “would permanently block any attempt to protect the unborn — even those who can survive outside the womb,” the Diocese of Burlington wrote in a bulletin published just prior to the vote.

But pro-abortion groups spent a lot of money to flood voters with advertisements promoting the amendment and received a lot of friendly news coverage. Those fighting to pass the amendment included the ACLU of Vermont, the League of Women Voters of Vermont, Alliance for a Better Vermont and Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund, according to VT Digger.

California and Michigan voters also passed pro-abortion amendments to their state constitutions Tuesday.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the infamous Roe v. Wade ruling in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and returned the abortion issue to voters. Now, more than a dozen states are enforcing laws that protect unborn babies from abortion and more are fighting in court to do so. New research estimates up to 10,000 unborn babies already have been saved from abortion as a result.