Patricia Blair is pro-choice.

She didn’t put it exactly that way. Until recently, when she thought about abortion at all, it was not as a political issue, but as it related to her, and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting one.

“I wanted babies,” she said.

Now, though, she’s aware that “some women might need an abortion,” and thinks they should have the right to make the decision, “as a matter of womens rights,” which sums up the pro-choice position rather succinctly.

It’s somewhat ironic, then, that the 38-year-old Pownal mother of three, may have propelled Vermont into a debate about abortion, even as she and the two legislators who responded to her plea insist that what they’re doing has nothing to do with abortion.

More ironic because the lawmakers – Bennington Democratic Sen. Richard Sears, and Newport Republican Sen. Vincent Illuzzi – also favor abortion rights, a stance that has not stopped them from sponsoring bills that trouble the state’s pro-choice campaigners while offering the minority but dedicated anti-abortion faction in the state a rare opportunity to score points.

Segueing, as they say in the TV world, to yet another irony: the political consequences of this impending dispute might be just what the anti-abortion forces do not want.

Assuming, that is, that there are any political or legislative consequences at all. There’s a good chance that neither bill will get out of committee, that the issue will be overwhelmed by the state’s budget battles and other more urgent matters such as the relicensing of Vermont Yankee.

For one thing, the proposed legislation is not likely to have much if any impact on the real world. Both bills are statements of philosophy as much as likely remedies to actual problems. That makes them no less interesting, and perhaps more contentious. Abstract arguments can be fierce, even when, as in this case, all sides agree that last August 10, something terrible happened to Pat Blair.

That was the day of her auto accident on Route 7, an accident caused, according to authorities, by the driver of another car, a young woman from Pownal who was allegedly driving while impaired by taking prescription drugs. Blair was injured. Her husband was more seriously hurt, remains confined, and is unable to work.

But that was not the worst consequence. Blair was pregnant with twins. They were killed in the accident. To Blair, she did not lose two fetuses, but two babies. She wants them remembered that way, and she wants other pregnant women protected from similar losses in the future.

Context matters here. Not long ago, the Blairs lost a daughter who was born with umbilical cord prolapse, a rare but often fatal childbirth emergency.

“But that was from natural causes,” she said. “This time, someone else’s choice caused their death. I don’t see why Vermont can’t hold her accountable.”

It’s close to impossible not to understand Blair’s anguish, and to want to help her overcome it. On the other hand, a state does not typically pass legislation to assuage the feelings of one of its citizens, which is pretty much all these two bills would accomplish.

The Sears bill (S-273) ”proposes to enhance the penalty for assault of a pregnant woman” if she is attacked or the victim of grossly “negligent operation of a motor vehicle, or operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”

As deterrence goes, this isn’t much. How many impaired people are going to decide that they’d better not get behind the wheel of a car because they might cause an accident involving a pregnant woman? Besides, it doesn’t satisfy Blair; it doesn’t mention the fetus, only the pregnant woman.

Blair prefers Illuzzi’s bill (S-175) which specifically “proposes to establish that a fetus be treated as a victim under state homicide law.” This could have some practical effect. If, for instance, a pregnant woman survived a physical attack but her fetus did not, the assailant in this case could be imprisoned for life, as if he had killed a born person.

To say the least, this is a rare circumstance. Usually, such a vicious attack on a pregnant woman ends up with her death, also, and her killer is sentenced to life in prison, or even execution. That’s what happened, for instance, to Scott Peterson, the Californian convicted of the 2002 murder of his wife and unborn child. He’s appealing his death sentence, which almost surely would have been imposed had his wife not been pregnant.

California is one of 37 states whose laws do recognize a fetus as a separate entity, effectively as a person. Like Vermont, California is a state with a strong pro-choice majority, lending some support to Blair’s claim that “fetal homicide laws can coexist with abortion rights.”

But Jill Krowinski, the communications director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said there were potential dangers to women in legally recognizing the personhood of the fetus.

“It’s the wrong approach,” she said. “It would separate the pregnant woman from her fetus in eyes of law. That could be the first step in threatening a woman’s right to control her own pregnancy.”

The first part of that statement is exactly what Blair wants to accomplish. Both are what the anti-abortion movement wants to accomplish, which helps explain why the Vermont Right to Life organization is supporting her, even tough she does not advocate their cause and says she “hasn’t had a whole lot of connection with them.”

Here’s where the political irony comes in. If the Legislature debates either of these bills, it will raise the saliency of the abortion issue, a development which might hurt Brian Dubie, the likely Republican candidate for governor, and an opponent of legal abortions.

Were politics entirely rational, this would make no difference. A woman’s right to choose an abortion is protected by the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the famous Roe v Wade decision of 1973. That decision is safe with the current Supreme Court, or any Court changes while Barack Obama is president, which will be at least to the end of the first term of whoever is elected governor this year.

But politics is not entirely rational, and just to complicate matters further, Alan Gilbert of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Committee points out that Vermont’s old abortion ban remains on the books. It’s 13 V.S.A. § 101, and should Roe ever be reversed, it would have to be repealed or abortions would be illegal here.

A repeal that would be more difficult with an abortion foe in the Second Floor Corner Office in Montpelier.

An unlikely scenario, perhaps, but that doesn’t rob it of all political oomph.

Gilbert brought up another point. In 1991, he wrote in a letter to Sears, the Legislature amended the law (23 VSA 1091) to deal more harshly with grossly negligent drivers who cause death or injury to a fetus. The law he said, had the effect of “broadening the (negligent motor vehicle operation) offense to cover pregnancies terminated by injury, because the mother is almost always the victim of serious bodily injury in such a crash.”

Gilbert said he through the driver who allegedly caused Blair’s accident could receive up to 45 years in prison, a sentence he called “quite punitive.”

So Vermont law already (if perhaps implicitly) recognizes the fetus. Not as a person, exactly, but as something to be protected.