Vermont has a measure on the ballot to amend its State Constitution. Prop 5, which would add article 22 on Reproductive Liberty, does not include the word abortion, but advocates hope that what they wrote will mean that, and it has a lot of support, but not many people understand what it means.
The University of New Hampshire survey, commissioned by WCAX, found that 75% of respondents said they would support the measure, known as Proposal 5 or Article 22. Just 18% said they would vote against it and 6% said they were still unsure.
The amendment, which has been approved by the Vermont House and Senate twice over four years, would guarantee “an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy.” If approved by a majority of voters in November, it would become part of the Vermont Constitution.
With Vermonters poised to take this plunge, we should revisit some oddities that could arise. As noted here:
Article 22 starts with, “reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed.” Even prefaced as referring to reproductive freedom, a talented lawyer could leverage it to mean anything, including a constitutional right to refuse the latest vaccine if it might in some way infringe on that right.
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[W]hat if a minor wants to get pregnant? Having survived the “right” to abortion and achieved an age where reproduction is possible, are they not entitled to their own reproductive freedom?
What if the unborn are, in some future legal context, defined as people? Article 22 would provide the unborn with “an individual right to personal reproductive autonomy [that] is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed.”
And this all matters, but it doesn’t. In the same poll: “Only 45% of the voters polled said they fully understood the amendment’s wording, though another 43% said they understood it “somewhat well.” So, 75% favor a constitutional amendment they don’t exactly understand. In other words, no one knows what it means, but they feel like it’s a good idea.
It reminds me of the NH right to privacy that we added to our Constitution a few years ago. No one, to my knowledge, has invoked it in their defense, and we’ll never know until lawyers and judges argue it out.
The same sounds true for Prop 5, with 75% of Vermonters willing to pass something that 80% of them might or don’t understand so that self-interested lawyers and our questionable judicial system can “work out” what it means.