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Emma Ottolenghi and Judy Tyson want Vermont women to remember how it used to be. Back in the years before 1972, getting an abortion wasn’t a matter of making an appointment at the local clinic. In those days, a Vermonter with sufficient funds and savvy could get a referral from the Clergy Counseling Service to a big-city provider, usually a doctor working in an unmarked room. Or she could fly to England to have the procedure. The U.K. legalized abortion in 1967.... Read more

The brochure is celestial blue with wafting clouds. Its cover is darkest, suggesting a lowering storm; each successive panel grows lighter. The logo is a dove. Last week’s two-day San Francisco conference “Reclaiming Fatherhood: A Multifaceted Examination of Men Dealing with Abortion” clearly hoped to move men in a heavenly direction.... Read more

VERMONT — There was a time when working at an abortion clinic necessitated wearing a bulletproof vest. Or stepping over chained protestors blocking the front door. In some cases, it meant giving your life. Is the past repeating itself at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England? Not quite, but employees say patients and staff are increasingly being harassed and intimidated at clinics in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.... Read more

VERMONT — When Vermont’s colleges and universities seek the federal government’s help in growing their student bodies, this probably isn’t the kind of “growth” they’re expecting. Tens of thousands of health clinics nationwide, including some student health centers on Vermont college campuses, have experienced a dramatic rise in the cost of birth control pills and other female contraceptives. The price hikes are the direct result of changes in the Medicaid rebate program included in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, which took effect January 1.... Read more

Within minutes of the Supreme Court's April 18 ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart, which upheld the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, emails poured into my inbox from feminist and pro-choice organizations.

NARAL Pro-Choice America asked me to forward my friends a message starting, "I'm sending you an email because I want you to help protect privacy and a woman's right to choose."... Read more

MONTPELIER - The Vermont Right to Life Committee has booked a bold-face name for its 34th-annual protest against the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States.

Alveda King, niece of the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., is scheduled to speak on Saturday from the well of the Vermont House in Montpelier. Organizers expect the participation of a King family member on the eve of Black History Month to attract up to 350 demonstrators. That's about 100 more than typically turn out to "mourn" the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling.... Read more

In August, while the headlines reported the mounting deaths of already-born Lebanese and Israeli children, a bill to save American "children," both "pre-born" and pregnant, moved toward passage. Senate bill 403, the Child Custody Protection Act, criminalizes the transport of a pregnant minor across state lines to get an abortion, if the transporter isn't the girl's parent and is thereby circumventing home-state parental-consent laws. The bill still needs to be reconciled with a similar one passed in the House this spring, then go to the President, who is eager to sign it.... Read more

BURLINGTON -- The Vermont Department of Health has pulled the plug on an award-winning website designed to teach young men about responsible sexual behavior. Health Commissioner Dr. Paul Jarris confirmed last week that he decided to take down the "Man Phone" website after learning it contained a link to another site featuring what he described as "absolutely inappropriate" sexual material.... Read more

BURLINGTON -- Life Choices, a pregnancy center in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, informs clients that having an abortion increases their risk of malignant breast cancer. It also claims that "condoms fail up to 44.5 percent of the time when used by the young and unmarried," and that "sexually active teens are six times more likely [than other teens] to attempt suicide."... Read more

17 weeks after Heather was raped by a man known to her and many other people in her small, rural community, the 11-year-old Vermont girl learned that she was carrying her attacker's child. Heather (not her real name) had had no prior sexual experience and didn't even know she was pregnant; her mother had to tell her. But since they live in one of the most ardently pro-choice states in the country, her mother assumed it wouldn't be difficult to terminate the pregnancy. Vermont is one of only a handful of states that puts no legal restrictions on when a woman can get an abortion.... Read more