In this issue, I am proud to have commissioned historian Cyndy Bittinger’s excellent feature on Vermont’s early reproductive rights and Vermont women’s successful decriminalization of abortion. That story includes the important role of Laura Twitchell.

Sometimes it takes just one person to kick start us in an entirely new direction, and Laura was that woman. What is it that makes one person step up, when another chooses to step back?

Reproductive rights and free choices for women is an issue that has been and still is so much a part of the times of our lives. And it is so critical that young women and girls—and young men--learn this history, and the way that one person’s actions can change the course of history.

Women Make History

Laura Twitchell was one of a kind, no question about it. Ask anyone who knew her. From 1985-1990, Laura Twitchell volunteered as the copy editor and proofreader for Vermont Woman. She supported women and knew women’s issues from the inside out. She knew that without the freedom to control her own body, and whether or not, or when she chose to become a mother, other freedoms hardly matter.

We were proud to have her company then, and were always encouraged by her no-nonsense example. Even though Laura died twenty years ago, and her greatest achievement was accomplished nearly forty years ago, her legacy of reproductive freedom for Vermont women endures to this day.

In 1972, a year before Roe v. Wade, “Jackie R” became the first woman to receive a legal abortion in the state of Vermont, and largely because of the behind-the scenes-work of Laura Twitchell, a doctor’s wife, who knew who to call and how to move forward. She was also part of establishing the first woman-controlled clinic with all-women practitioners.

This was a very big deal. Prior to Vermont’s court overturning the law, abortion providers were prosecuted as criminals and given long prison sentences. Women who did manage to get an abortion did so at great risk, medically and personally. Poor women simply had no choice.

Not Simple

While a woman’s right to a legal abortion was established, it was only the beginning.

Access to health providers in Vermont was non- existent. Legalization was won. Access was another story.

Burlington was Vermont’s largest city with the largest population. Its hospital was under the control and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which remains a significant force worldwide--not only against safe medically necessary abortion, but contraception itself.

Again, Laura Twitchell was on the front lines, who along with many others worked tirelessly to find the funding to create what became the Vermont Woman’s Health Center (WHC) in 1975, the first of its kind in the nation which was first located in Colchester, then on Bank Street and later North Avenue in Burlington.

The WHC on Bank Street, which is now the Farmer’s Table restaurant, was firebombed in the late seventies and burned to the ground. Although never proven, speculation was that it was an intentionally violent act against the women’s center. Resistance to the Woman’s Health Center was fierce, especially from within the established and male-dominated medical community and the Catholic Diocese.

You will read in Cyndy Bittinger’s article an outline of the 1980s and early 90s, its murderous threats, physical violence and property damage. These were in full visibility in Burlington. Operation Rescue and religious zealots, funded and run by sources outside the state, actively demonstrated on the Woman’s Health Center property, terrorizing and intimidating patients, staff, friends, families, children and supporters. History alone cannot capture the feelings. The political is so personal.

Vile messages were posted in public buildings, schools, churches, businesses. Those staffing the Women’s Health Center were under threat for their lives, and the police were often on high alert. Reproductive choice became a political issue in every campaign. Efforts were made in every legislative session to close down the center, to restrict its funding, to repeal the law.

Throughout this volatility and for 25 years following Roe v Wade, right up to the year she died in 1996, Laura continually raised money to help poor women, for both the Vermont Woman’s Health Center and for Planned Parenthood of Vermont. If there were an Operation Rescue attack on the woman’s health center, Laura along with many others, made themselves part of a human chain who arm-in-arm circled the WHC, to help protect patients and staff entering the building and to keep out Operation Rescue crazies.

Still a Big Issue

Because the Supreme Court decision left it open for states to decide on various restrictions and funding ambiguity, politicians, particularly the conservative right, used the right to safe abortions as an emotional wedge issue. State by state, restrictions to safe abortion have eroded many women’s constitutionally legal right to control her own reproductive choices. The lack of funding for poor women makes these restrictions especially difficult. Women of means will always have access to abortions. It is the poor who are hurt the most.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently said she felt Roe v Wade will be upheld. But if the worst should happen and Roe were repealed, then “the states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back.”

The bill S.315 was just introduced in the Vermont legislature on January 7, by State Senators Tim Ashe, Christopher Bray, the late Sally Fox, Virginia Lyons, Dick McCormack, and David Zuckerman, to officially decriminalize abortion in Vermont and recognize a woman’s right to choose. The Vermont statute which pre-dates Roe v Wade is unenforceable, and its repeal would “serve as an important legislative action in support of a woman’s reproductive rights as well as help a health care provider to perform an abortion without fear of criminal liability.”

So what Laura Twitchell did, so many years ago, really did make a huge difference for Vermont and for Vermont women, a difference that appears to be in effect despite many parts of the country turning the clock back to a time that oppressed women and refused them the most basic right—control over their own future.

You know, we are not here for long. We are born into the world, and some of it is joyous and beautiful, some dark and horrific. Most of us do not have time to makeover the entire world, to impact change in a major way. Most of us just do what we can do and hope that it matters.

Every so often someone emerges and does something that makes a difference and changes history. Vermont was lucky to have Laura Twitchell when we did. Because she took “Jackie R”’s call, and because she called Dr. Beecham, and because she was determined and fearless and single-purposed, we get to live in a state that will never go back to pre-Roe days.

Vermont will always be a state where a woman will have the option to a medically safe, affordable and accessible abortion.

Now that’s a legacy.