 Welcome, viewers, to our ongoing program, Focus, coming to you from Channel 17 Center for Media and Democracy here in Burlington, Vermont. I'm your host, Margaret Harrington, and viewers, let's welcome our special guest coming back to the studio on this subject, Sharon Fraser Toburg, from the Policy Analyst from the Vermont Right to Life Committee. Thank you, Margaret. Yes, thanks for coming back, Sharon, and we are continuing, we have a modification of the title. This title is, The Vermont Abortion Law is Bad Legislation. When you were here several months ago, it was the Vermont Abortion Bill is Bad Legislation. So a lot of water under the bridge since that time. Yes, the bill passed both chambers of the legislature and Governor Scott signed it into law, so it is now law here in Vermont. Okay, and I have in front of me a press release, and that's why I got in contact with you again. And you are bringing up the issue of Planned Parenthood PAC, Political Action Committee fundraiser to honor Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan for promoting unrestricted, unregulated abortion. So let's talk about this issue of the Attorney General of Vermont supporting the Planned Parenthood. Well, throughout the course of the legislative discussion on both H57 and Proposal 5, the proposed amendment to the Vermont Constitution to enshrine abortion into that document, the Attorney General's office, including T.J. Donovan himself and representatives from his office, were very frequently in the State House testifying in favor of these proposals, as well as really trying to counter any criticism of the bills that was presented. And it's really concerning to me and to pro-lifers throughout Vermont that a political action committee that supports Attorney General Donovan at election time is giving him an award for what he did in the legislature. Donovan's supposed to be the Attorney General for Vermont, not the Attorney General for a special interest group Planned Parenthood advancing their agenda. And it's not just in the legislature. He has filed suit in federal court against conscience protections for healthcare workers. He was also very active in making sure Planned Parenthood received state funding to replace federal funding that they rejected because they refused to stop promoting abortion as just a method of birth control. And they also have promised to use the resources of the Attorney General's office to promote and pass that constitutional amendment that has been proposed. And I don't think that this is appropriate behavior for someone who is supposed to be the Attorney General for Vermont. It goes, doesn't Sharon go beyond appropriateness and go into a legal kind of issue? Well, certainly Attorney General Donovan, who is a ardent supporter of unrestricted unregulated abortion, has every right to personally support Planned Parenthood and what they want to accomplish. But when he turns and uses the resources of his office, the resources of the taxpayers of the state of Vermont to promote one side of an issue so strongly, that's where I take exception. And Attorney General Donovan has testified before the Vermont legislature on these issues? Yes, he has. He actually usually drops in for a couple of minutes and then turns it over to some of the other attorneys in his office to do all the lengthy testimony. But they were in, I believe, seven times or so the Attorney General's office on age 57 in Prop. 5. And they really do not come in to testify on a lot of pieces of legislation, but they were there very frequently to advocate for unrestricted abortion. And when you say they, you also mean the office of the Attorney General doesn't usually get involved in legislation in the Vermont legislature? Well, the Attorney General's office certainly has a role to play on some legislative issues when they're talking about legal issues, sentencing their in on those types of things. But it's highly unusual to see them in on this type of legislation that is so controversial and so, you know, not so directly related to what the Attorney General's office is supposed to be doing. Well, it is controversial, Sharon, and yet it seems to be playing out down in Montpelier and not in general throughout Vermont. Is that so? Or in fact, it seems to me, and that's why I have this show as a sub-series for focus, that people aren't paying, the general public isn't paying that much attention to it because it was presented. Well, tell me how it was presented at the beginning as something that signed into law that was always true, right? Yes. Abortion has been legal without restriction in Vermont since 1972, since even before the Roe v. Wade decision. There was a state court decision, Beecham v. Leahy, that resulted in a statute that was on Vermont's books being overturned and abortion throughout pregnancy being legal in Vermont. And it has been for nearly 50 years. So it was very odd, I guess I would say, to see such an effort put into codifying, putting into statute something that was already allowable in Vermont. But that's what they did. Although there are some provisions of age 57 that often get overlooked and those relate to restrictions on what are called public entities and that would be any state entity that would include a school board, it would include the health, the medical practice board, the secretary of state's office which regulates nurses and some other health care providers. They are no longer allowed to quote unquote interfere with access to abortion. But we know that these terms are not defined in the bill. And one thing that's very concerning is since that bill was passed, it came to light a case over in South Africa where a doctor actually was lost as medical license because he told a patient that the fetus was a human being. And that was claimed that that quote unquote interfered with the right to have an abortion. So that's a very concerning. We don't know exactly where age 57 is going to take us in terms of restrictions on speech about abortion. Let's jump into the filing suit which the Attorney General did to roll back federal conscience protections for health care workers who do not want to participate in abortion. So here we go to the University of Vermont Medical Center. Well, since 1973 there has been a federal law that's called the Church Amendments named after the sponsor of the amendments that prevents hospitals from forcing health care providers from participating in abortion. The Trump administration has proposed and has approved some rules to strengthen those protections. And the Attorney General along with the Attorney's General of several other states have filed suit trying to get those regulations overturned. But we've had a case here in Vermont at the UVM Medical Center where a nurse filed a complaint with health and human services that those regulations were violated and that she was lied to and forced to participate in an elective abortion procedure in violation of not only the Church Amendments but also what UVM Medical Center's policy states. So that is a development since I was last here on your show. UVM Medical Center has been denying the claim but recently they indicated they would start working with the health and human services to make sure that their policies were more in line with what is required by the Church Amendments. But of course Attorney General Donovan and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England have both filed suit to overturn those regulations. Which it's kind of ironic that those organizations and individuals who claim to be pro-choice don't seem to want to give any choice to the health care workers here in the local hospital. Do you have any insight into what is going on at the University of Vermont Medical Center as far as the personnel is concerned? The nurses and doctors who want to step aside from doing elective abortions? Well there are a number of them who have left because this was not really an isolated case. There are some additional nurses who have come forward to file complaints. But one thing we all need to understand about UVM Medical Center is that they schedule these elective abortions and they are done in the same operating rooms that all the other surgeries are done in. If you're getting a knee replacement or you need an app and deck to me, it's all done in the operating room. And they already have a shortage of nurses here in Vermont. It's a serious problem and by not respecting the conscious rights of health care providers who do not want to participate in abortion and by forcing some of them out, they're really exacerbating the nursing shortage. And that's going to affect all Vermonters seeking health care. It's not like the abortions are done somewhere else. They're done right where all the other surgeries are done. But also the abortions at the University of Vermont Medical Center, that's a new occurrence. Is it not? It is. Up until the fall of 2017, the policy at the hospital was to only do abortions that were quote-unquote medically necessary. But in 2017, they changed that policy and now they do elective abortions up until 21 weeks and they will do them even later than that in some circumstances. And is there a change on the board of the University of Vermont Medical Center also, including a former employee Planned Parenthood? The former CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, Allie Stigney, was on the board of the UVM Medical Center at the time the decision was made to start doing elective abortions. She is now the chairman of the board. And we also know that Dr. Lauren McAfee, who is one of the physicians who performs abortions, she has been a prime mover in this area. And we have to understand that this is not an isolated instance. We know that Dr. McAfee has been to trainings on how to advance abortion in various states and they've chosen to come to Vermont to do that. And that's the same with the legislation in the proposed constitutional amendment. There are other states considering these types of things. And if you look at the various languages of the bills and the constitutional amendments, they're very similar. This is an orchestrated effort to expand abortion throughout the state. It's an effort to silence medical professionals who oppose abortion and really get them out of the profession, I think. Let's move on to Attorney General T.J. Donovan securing, along with Governor Phil Scott, $800,000 in state funding to replace the federal Title X monies refused by Planned Parenthood so they can continue to promote abortion as a method of family planning. Now, here again, Title X is a family planning program that has been in place in the United States for decades. And the regulations of the Title X program have always prohibited funds from going to organizations that promote abortion as a method of family planning. The regulations in place are finally being enforced, but Planned Parenthood promotes abortion as a method of family planning. They don't want to separate them. If they would separate their abortion services from their family planning services, they would not be in violation of Title X and they could continue to receive that money. But they have instead rejected that money and the state has replaced it. That's concerning because, of course, the federal money came with those regulations. So now we know that if they're receiving more money from the state, they can use that for abortion and to promote abortion is a method of family planning. There's no regulations on it. We are looking at the various grants that Planned Parenthood of Northern New England receives from the state and reviewing what they say. And one thing we've found very surprising is we think of Title X as being a program for low-income women without insurance, but we've seen from their reports that 95% of the patients they are seeing have insurance. And yet they're receiving huge amounts of state and federal funds to provide services to uninsured women. But we don't have that many of them here in Vermont because of other policies that are in place to provide insurance to people. Well, let's follow the money a little bit here, Sharon. And I'm looking at the ad in the back of the field guide to Burlington here. And it's Planned Parenthood. The ad is for Planned Parenthood mentioning the 12 health centers that are here across Vermont, the small state of Vermont. And also the services they offer without mentioning abortion at all. They just have well-person checkups. One of the bullet points is well-person checkups and more underlined meaning abortion. Yes. But we have to know, too, that Planned Parenthood is not just a health care organization. They have what they call their Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which they call their political advocacy arm. And they move in 2016, I believe it was over a million dollars from Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, sort of the health care health clinics fund. That went right into their political advocacy fund. So at the same time they're saying, oh, we have to have this money to provide these health care services. The state needs to replace it. They're putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into their political advocacy programs instead of what people would consider their health care options. Let's move to Attorney General Donovan, promising to use the resources of the Attorney General's office to promote passage of Proposal 5 and amendment to enshrine abortion in the Vermont Constitution. Yes, that occurred during the discussions over Proposal 5 and the legislature, and that proposal did pass the legislature. And just to explain to your viewers how that process works, the proposal passed the Senate and the House. We have to have an election, intervening election in 2020. And then the proposal will have to pass the House and the Senate again here in Vermont. And if that happens, it will go before the people for ratification on the ballot in November of 2022. So that's still three years from now. This is a long process. And there are roles to play, particularly in statute. The Secretary of State's office has some particular roles to play in terms of publicizing that there is this constitutional amendment being proposed and explaining some of what it means. But there's nowhere in statute where it says state government entities need to be taking sides on whether it should pass and using the resources of their office to get it passed. It's one thing to provide information and make it known that a vote is coming up, but it's a whole other thing to intervene and use your resources of your office to promote the passage of such an amendment. And this is a promise from the office of the Attorney General. They stated in their testimony before the legislature that they would be using the resources of their office to try to get proposal five passed, yes. And to go deeper into proposal five, Sharon, the abortion law was needed to segue into proposal five. Is that so? I'm not sure it was needed, but it was considered a step. The way they described it was the proposal five is a principle to put in the Constitution in age 57 is what that means. So really what it means is we're placing unrestricted, unregulated abortion as a right in our Vermont Constitution. And it's really interesting because it goes in as a new article, article 22, under chapter one of the Vermont Constitution. And you know what? In the history of the state of Vermont, we've never added an article to chapter one of the Vermont Constitution. So this is 200-plus years. There has never been a need in the eyes of the voters to add an article to that section of the Constitution. So we'll see what happens in 2022 if it gets that far. So there is a question that it might not come up as a ballot item for the Vermont voters? Well, it does have to pass the legislature again after the 2020 election. I think it's fairly likely that that will happen, but I've been around the legislature long enough to know that there are no guarantees. You never know what sort of issues are going to come up. The forces will come to play. Political wrangling will go on to see. And certainly if Vermonters are concerned and they don't want to see it come up, they're going to be communicating with their legislators and with candidates running in 2020 to see where they stand on this issue. Is that one of your suggestions for activism for people right now? Yes. Yes, certainly. You can look up online to see how the legislators voted on proposal five. And you could ask them about it. Will they vote for it again? They want to hear from constituents. And if they hear from constituents who are unhappy and think that the state has other priorities than putting into the Constitution something that's already law in Vermont, then they might opt not to put it before voters if they hear from enough of them beforehand. Well, some one guest here, I believe it was Representative Donny who said that it's important that it doesn't become an amendment because an amendment can't be overturned, or it's harder to overturn an amendment than a law. A law can be overturned due process. Yes. The legislature can change the law in any legislative session, but a constitutional amendment can only be introduced every four years. You have to have a supermajority to pass it. You have to have a two-thirds vote of the Senate to pass it initially. And it takes many years. So to try to change that in the future would be very difficult. And as I understand it also, Sharon, they can't change the wording of the amendment now after the wording was put in in the last session of the legislature. That is correct. The wording that was voted in this past legislative session is the wording that must go forward. And they were changing those words half an hour before the final vote on the amendment. It was not well thought out. It was not carefully crafted. They were moving back and forth on the language up until the last minute before it was voted. And that does not give me a lot of confidence in the proposal, or wouldn't give me confidence in any proposal to think that they're changing it just minutes before a final vote on something that, once it's passed, you can't change it again. You can't offer amendments like you can to a piece of legislation. And as I understand it, the word abortion is not in the context? No, it's not. In fact, Vermont Right to Life and even the Attorney General's office suggested that the word abortion be included in the proposal. But it is not in there anywhere. And I think that's by design because people don't like abortion. Even those who are in favor of it, no one wants to see rising abortion rates. No one wants to see more abortions. So trying to mask that, I think, is key to getting this proposal passed in the minds of the abortion advocates. Just like in their ad here on the back of the booklet. They don't mention abortion there. It's the same thing with the constitutional amendment. They don't mention it. And it's spoken of as reproductive rights. Also with the campaigns of different Democrats who are running for the presidency or who are preparing to run for the presidency. It's listed as reproductive rights and not abortion rights. And then Attorney General Donovan testified in support of H57 which codified unrestricted, unregulated abortion in Vermont statute. Yes, and he had two assistants in his office who were doing a lot of the testifying also. They also were honored by Planned Parenthood. So it was really the whole office there that's getting honored for their work to promote passage of this legislation. And as I said, I offered testimony. We took a break in the testimony and the Attorney General's office staff literally rewrote their testimony to discount any of the concerns that I had just raised about the bill. They're working so closely with the Planned Parenthood and Senator Ginny Lyons who was a chair of the committee who also was honored by Planned Parenthood at this event with T. D. A. Donovan. So the agenda was set before the hearings on this legislation and the constitutional amendment even began. It was not an opportunity to decide is this a good bill or a bad bill. It was an opportunity to figure out what do we have to do to get this enacted into law. And that is why viewers, we have to wake up here and learn more from Sharon Fraser-Toberg and other people who will be coming on this series to find out about what is really going on because there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, isn't there, as far as the... And there's a division between the Democrats and the Republicans, supposedly, and yet the governor is a Republican and he completely endorsed the bill coming law. Yes, he did, which I think I was very disappointed in the decision by the governor to put his signature on the bill. It passed overwhelmingly, a veto would not have been sustained, but Governor Scott did not have to sign it. It could have become law without his signature, but he did sign it and that, as far as I'm concerned, signals that he supports the bill. He supports the unrestricted, unregulated abortion throughout pregnancy. Well, is there any pushback? Well, there is a pushback from Vermont right to life. I think there will be some pushback. I think Governor Scott disappointed a lot of the people who have supported it in the past. We've heard from many people who have said they voted for him previously, but they will not do that again. So we'll see what happens. At the same time, the issue is very minimalized by the media in Vermont and by the...it isn't into the conversation, the ordinary conversation in Vermont. It comes under, well, Vermont is a place where we live and let live, but in this case, it's a different take on that. And Sharon, before we finish, could you explain about how the nine months, nine months for the development of the fetus to the human being, and it takes nine months, and they are, Planned Parenthood, is just getting into chopping it up and saying that this is not a human life from the beginning. Is that so? Actually, they don't say it's not a human life. They say that it's a woman's right to choose, and so it doesn't matter to them if it's a human life. It doesn't matter if it is a child that can survive outside of the womb if born now. The woman's right to choose always, always in every circumstance trumps a child's right to life, even in the second, third trimester of pregnancy. So that's where the abortion advocates are at. They don't care if it's a human life because they believe the woman's right always, always trumps any right that an unborn child might have to live, no matter how far along in pregnancy. Nine months? Nine months. And even at the UVM Medical Center, they do not have any upper limit on how late in pregnancy they will perform an abortion. They sometimes will bring in an ethics consultant to give an advisory opinion to the medical practice, but ultimately it's up to the medical personnel to make the decision. And I think that's especially true because of the codification of the law that the ethics person or committee at the medical center does not have the final say at all. No, they don't. Although, again, in the testimony, they made it appear like they did and in fact said that the ethics committee could veto an abortion, but if you read their policy, it says exactly the opposite that the ethics committee cannot veto the decision if they do not agree with the medical provider, the medical director makes the decision as to whether the abortion can proceed. And that's one of the things that is going back to the conscience protections. People have to understand these are fully formed babies that are being aborted. You have to abort them by literally dismembering them because you can't take a chance that they might accidentally be born alive if they're delivered. But these nurses and these medical providers, they have to reassemble the body parts to make sure the abortion is complete. And that is a very traumatic thing for people to have to do. Even if you are someone who's fairly comfortable with abortion, just think about having to reassemble that dismembered child to make sure the abortion was complete. So that's one thing that I think a lot of people don't understand when we're talking about conscience protections. They don't grasp what this abortion entails and what these medical providers are being asked to do. And what about the laws concerning the body parts? There have been, you may have known of the undercover videotapes that suggested that Planned Parenthood was selling the body parts. There's actually testimony going on in federal court in the case right now. And the advocates are testifying that that is in fact what they do. They use the body parts for research. We don't know what goes on here in Vermont. We don't know what happens in Vermont as far as that goes, but we know from the testimony out in the court case in California that that is going on in other parts of the country. And you don't know, but also there's no law about what to do with body parts? Not that I'm aware of. In Vermont. Sharon, could you wrap up for us now this part five of our series and where we are right now. We're kind of in a limbo of what's going to happen every which way and the abortions are happening now and there's a lot of money with Planned Parenthood, with so many offices here in this small state of Burlington, of Vermont. And I understand that there was one Planned Parenthood office that was closed in New Hampshire and moved over into Vermont because of the issue of informing adults with underage people having abortions. The Planned Parenthood of Northern New England had a facility in Claremont, New Hampshire that shortly after New Hampshire enacted a law requiring parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion, that clinic was moved across the border to White River and reopened in Vermont because Vermont doesn't have parental notification legislation. And as far as where we are right now, Act 57 has become... Well, age 57 has become Act 47 signed into the law by the legislature, so it is law now. And we still... I don't think know the full ramifications of that, particularly how it relates to public entities, what it might inspire in terms of abortion practitioners coming to Vermont. We've just found that in Illinois where they passed some similar legislation, Planned Parenthood built a secret mega-abortion clinic. They had people apply for permits and things under another name and all of a sudden they have a... what they are calling a mega-clinic opening. Will we see something like that in Vermont? We don't know yet. So there's still a lot of things to play out with age 57 and we'll see what happens with the constitutional amendment as well. But this is a discussion that's going to go on for several more years while we figure out what's going to happen as far as these bills and the constitutional amendment go. Yes, and money is a major player in this. Oh, yes. There's always money. Planned Parenthood has pledged nationally $45 million to influence the 2020 elections. So they're spending plenty to make sure that the people who will protect their business get elected. And we will see if this is not just a political issue. Oh, no, no, it certainly isn't. And it's an issue that affects... it affects us all because it affects our health care system when it comes to conscience rights. It affects it in terms of what are our priorities for our tax dollars with age 57. Abortion has become a priority for our health care system to fund it, to provide it over any other medical procedure. So we will see how this plays out in the next months and years. Okay, and Sharon Toburg, I hope that you do return here and explain to us more of what's going on regarding this crucial issue. Well, I'd be glad to come back as things change and things need updating. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Margaret. And thank you viewers. Thank you, Channel 17, for having us here. Until next time. Goodbye for now.