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Moretown Shortcircuits Abortion Debate
Thursday, March 9, 2006
By: Peter Hirschfeld
Times Argus -- Moretown was one of several Vermont towns to turn down a Town Meeting Day motion to require mandated parental notification for abortion.
This town was to be the only Washington County town Tuesday to take up the thorny issue of requiring parental notification for underage girls seeking abortions.
But the debate was squelched before it began. A motion to postpone the article indefinitely passed overwhelmingly in a floor vote, effectively stripping the advisory article of any weight its petitioners had intended.
The article, on warnings in 31 Vermont towns, was meant to foster small-town debate and provide straw-poll guidance to Vermont legislators who would presumably use the results to shape statewide policy, according to residents who petitioned to have the article on the warning.
"We wanted to see what the sentiment of the town was, for one thing," said Jim O'Neill, a Moretown resident who helped collect the signatures that landed the article on the warning. The names of five percent of the electorate are required for consideration on a warning. "It's a very important issue, something that will likely be going before the (U.S.) Supreme Court very soon."
It isn't the first time town halls and elementary schools have become talking grounds for national affairs; Vermont towns have a history of discussing issues over which municipal government has no direct control. More than 100 towns last year voted on whether the Vermont's National Guard should be pulled from Iraq; nuclear nonproliferation articles have appeared regularly on some town ballots; and Newfane this year considered an article to impeach the president.
Judith Sutphen said the article's municipal irrelevance and obviously pro-life wording made it inappropriate Town Meeting Day fodder.
"The article is worded in a very slanted manner," said Sutphen, the Moretown resident who made the motion to postpone the vote. "So it made it look like if you don't vote for it, you're against young girls' best interests and well being."
Sutphen added that the controversial article wasn't part of a localized, "grassroots" effort, but rather a disingenuous attempt to hijack Vermont's civic holiday by the national and statewide pro-life movement. Residents in Waterbury and Stowe also collected the requisite number of signatures to get the article on the ballot, however selectboards in those towns decided it wasn't town business and voted to exclude it from the warning.
"This is part of a statewide and nationwide effort to get the issue in front of legislators, because the issue has not gotten traction…," she said. "It's underhanded in the way it came before voters."
For Sutphen, the moral complexities of parental notification laws are best served by one-on-one interactions, not by community-wide debate during which few opinions are likely to be changed.
"It's a highly divisive issue among people," she said, noting she's against any parental notification law. "It takes a conversation with each person to understand the implications of parental notification. It's a bad policy, but it's difficult for people to understand why it's a bad policy, and that's why it requires individual conversations."
David Van Deusen, another resident at the meeting, said he wouldn't have voted in favor of the article either. But on a day specifically designed to air political issues in a town forum, he said, the town should capitalize on an opportunity to send its views to the Statehouse.
"This town and towns all across Vermont take up statewide and national issues. We did it last year with the Iraq resolution. It's ridiculous and hypocritical for us to say it isn't town business," Van Deusen said. "I think it's important for folks to have an open discussion and debate and then vote on such things to let the state know where we stand on such things as a town."
Mary Holden, a Moretown resident and health education teacher at Harwood Union High School, said a town meeting debate wouldn't include the voices that should shape the policy.
"The reasons for not having parental notification have to do with fear of the girl, and you're not going to have a young girl raise her hand in the town hall to talk about this," Holden said. "She's the silent little kid. I know who she is. And she's just not going to stand up at this meeting."
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