It is of course true that the proposed amendment in Vermont is not going to change anything about what is now done or permitted or possible, but will simply make the right now established by law a little harder to erode through changes of political balance. It will, in a sense, change the granting of permission to a right, but the difference is invisible except in the way it may be approached in the future.
But even if this were not so, and even if in some sense this action were legitimately perceived as, in some way, "radical," it would still differ substantively from the banning of abortions, simply because, no matter how radical a right might be seen to be, its exercise is never accompanied by arrest, trial, conviction, and sentencing, nor by error. A right removes an action from the legal system altogether. A right can be ignored, even argued against, without penalty at all. A right is different in its very substance from a law that denies it. And that is entirely true even if the law is correct and the right is not.
And I might add, though it should not be necessary, that the proposed right is not exclusively with regard to abortion, but also to other issues including birth control, a right which is, at this very moment, under attack by some in this nation, even if it is supported by all in this particular forum.
