Dear Editor,
The Vermont Medical Society states that “no abortion providers in Vermont perform elective abortions in the third trimester.” However, their claim seems terribly disingenuous considering that prop 5 sets no time limits, but allows for unrestricted, unregulated abortion for any reason right up to the moment of birth. If they feel so strongly that there is a problem with late-term abortions, why hasn’t even one physician from this society ever spoken out against Prop 5, or at least suggested limits?
This raises some troubling questions: what exactly is it about late-term abortions that the physicians in the Vermont Medical Society — and the politicians who agree with them in their support of Prop. 5 – find so disturbing that they are adamant such a thing would never happen in Vermont? Why do they insist that for the first six months, abortion is a private decision between a woman and her healthcare provider, but then somehow arbitrarily decide it is no longer ethical afterward to terminate her pregnancy? Who decides these timelines and on what basis?
Is it because of the moral difficulty experienced by these physicians, realizing they will have just purposely destroyed and then delivered a dead baby, who is without a doubt recognizable as a nearly full-term human infant? Sometimes the abortion doesn’t go as planned, and the baby is born alive. Then what? Did you know that Senators Leahy and Sanders actually voted against legislation which would ensure lifesaving measures be given to infants who survive botched abortions?
Is it because they believe that preborn children in the first and second trimesters are incapable of feeling pain? The Vermont Medical Society believes that a fetus does not have the ability to “interpret and perceive pain until at least 28 weeks.”
This information is tragically misleading when the fact is that premature babies as young as 22 weeks—the second trimester—are surviving and thriving now because of continuing progress in the science of neonatal technology. Do these physicians really believe that these tiny children do “not have the ability to interpret and perceive pain?”
What ethics will prevent one of these abortion providers from becoming the pioneer in our brave little state, the first to welcome and do abortions for those who can’t obtain third-trimester abortions in their own states?
How ironic that as we celebrate the birthday of the great champion of human and civil rights for all persons, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—as we most certainly should—we deny personhood and the right to life for preborn children.
Regardless of the stage of pregnancy, Prop. 5 will only further enshrine this blatant hypocrisy, and this is why we must vote “no.”
Martin Green, Morrisville
