Vermont’s Reproductive Liberty Amendment Heads to the November Ballot

AAUW Bennington Provides Testimony

by Julie Mackaman

Vermont lawmakers passed the Reproductive Liberty Amendment on February 8, a milestone in the four-year legislative journey to the November ballot. Proposal 5, if passed, will make Vermont the country’s first state to constitutionally guarantee the right to abortion and contraception. Vermont voters, 70 percent of whom say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, are expected to approve it.

The House vote followed a public hearing before a House committee on January 26, in which some 70 people provided testimony, with about two-thirds of them speaking in favor of the amendment. I delivered our AAUW Bennington testimony via Zoom as the last person on the roster of scheduled speakers. Twelve days later the House handily passed the amendment (107 to 41), and the amendment was on its way to the ballot.

Following is the text of AAUW Bennington’s full testimony, drafted by an ad hoc board committee and supporting national AAUW’s position on reproductive rights. (Because of the two-minute time limit, I delivered only excerpts of this testimony on January 26.)

My name is Julie Mackaman and I am the secretary of the Bennington Branch of the American Association of University Women (hereafter “AAUW”). Our board and branch members urge you to pass the Reproductive Liberty Amendment and present Proposal 5 to Vermont voters this November. If passed, ours will become the first state in the nation to expressly safeguard reproductive rights in our constitution, regardless of decisions made in Washington, DC and other states.

By way of introduction, for almost a century Bennington has been an active branch of AAUW, a national organization founded in 1881 to open doors for girls and women to pursue higher education — even then understood as a crucial step toward ensuring their economic security. We support national AAUW’s position that women should be guaranteed the right to make their own decisions regarding their reproductive health, as for women, this liberty undergirds all others. Especially for low-income women, access to reproductive health — including contraception and abortion — is often the key to breaking a cycle of poverty. (AAUW: Where We Stand: Reproductive Rights)

Early and unplanned pregnancies can present a significant barrier to women in their pursuit of a college degree and career. A woman’s decision to drop out of school or not to enroll in college because of an unintentional pregnancy may have ramifications on her earning power over the years and her eventual retirement income. Women who defer their education and career due to an unplanned pregnancy often face daunting odds when they try to pick up where they left off.

The findings of the 2018 Turnaway Study undertaken by the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health concludes that women experience harm from being denied a wanted abortion. The study’s four findings.

● Denying a woman an abortion creates economic hardship and insecurity which lasts
for years.
● Women turned away from getting an abortion are more likely to stay in contact with a
violent partner. They are also more likely to raise the resulting child alone.
● The financial well–being and development of [the children a woman already has] is negatively impacted when their mothers are denied abortion
● Giving birth is connected to more serious health problems than having an abortion.


Today, we confront the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down or debilitate the protections guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. We argue that stripping the choice of whether to go through with a pregnancy from a woman and handing it over to the government as a directive is a violation of her rights, including her fundamental right to make choices regarding her health and economic well-being.

From this small pocket of southwestern Vermont, we add our support to the Reproduction Liberty Amendment. The girls and women in our community deserve access to comprehensive family planning and reproductive health services, for only when their reproduction liberty is constitutionally protected are their other liberties safeguarded.