Why abortion fight isn’t over if Roe is overturned
Virginia Lyons has served two decades as a state senator in Vermont. For 18 of those years, she was happy with how accessible abortion services were in the state.
Now she wants to go a step further and amend the state constitution.
Abortion access is relatively unfettered in the liberal state. But after watching Republican President Donald Trump get elected in 2016, and then solidify a conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court by appointing three new justices, she thought the state needed to do more.
Her proposed amendment – which must be passed by the statehouse before going on a statewide ballot next year – would enshrine a constitutional right to abortion in the state. Vermont would become the first state to do so.
“We can all see the writing on the wall,” says Senator Lyons.
Since the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to abortion with its 1973 opinion in Roe v. Wade, there’s been a “continued undermining” of the right, she adds, with federal courts permitting states to
