Artist Loveday Funck writes, "We are fighting a dystopian power struggle in which the powers that be would rather women die in agony than be able to possess any control or agency over their own bodies." (Credit: Courtesy the Artist)
According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37 percent think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.
Local artist Stephanie Albion falls in this 61 percent. Once the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked in May, she knew she had to do something to express her anger, frustration, and sadness, so she turned to collage, her mode of communication. She also turned to Danielle Sumler in hopes of reviving the Nasty Women of Memphis.
In 2017, Sumler, along with Chelle Ellis, founded the Nasty Women of Memphis, joining a movement of other Nasty Women chapters throughout the country who were putting on pop-up exhibitions in response to the 2016 election. “The whole thing is, one, giving artists a chance to just express themselves and have a conversation,” Sumler explains, “but also, making it a fundraiser, too. The artist, when they submit their work, price it themselves, but each piece needs to donate at least 50 percent to Planned Parenthood, with the rest going directly to the artist. Some choose to donate more.”
For that first exhibition, Ellis and Sumler had met only a month before opening. “It was very fast,” Sumler says. “I think I was kind of shocked by how well received it was under that timeline. We were packed that opening night. It was really exciting — all the positive responses, not only from the artists who submitted but also all the people who came.”
Nasty Women of Memphis’ opening reception in 2017. (Photo: Nasty Women of Memphis)
That year, Nasty Women art exhibitions spread globally, raising money on behalf of women’s rights, individual rights, and abortion rights, but now most of the chapters are seemingly defunct, including the original New York City chapter. Yet in Memphis, the Nasty Women have put on three exhibitions since that inaugural year.
The next exhibition opened in 2018 and addressed the Me Too Movement and Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation. The third opened virtually in 2020, responding to all that was 2020.
“We actually closed on the day the election results came in, so that was pretty cool,” Sumler adds. After that, Ellis and Sumler had agreed that the 2020 exhibit would be their last exhibit, feeling that they had said all they needed to say. “We were kind of like, ‘We’ve done this enough, we’ve had our time with it.’”
But then Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Stephanie Albion reached out to Sumler. “We were like, ‘Well, that’s a perfect reason to wanna do something.’” So on June 25th, the day after the Roe v. Wade reversal, they announced that another exhibition would happen — “another chance to express our rage through art and another chance to support Planned Parenthood.” The show would be titled “CHOICE.”
Angi Cooper’s Objectification Board (Photo: Courtesy the Artist)
The call for artists went out to women, people with uteruses, and all those who support reproductive rights. “It’s really important for us to make it an inclusive conversation because not only does this affect someone who identifies as female, but it affects everyone really.” From there, Sumler, Ellis, Albion, and artist Savana Raught worked together on a volunteer basis to select the more than 80 artists of various media and styles. In the end, the pieces, when put together, touch on a range of emotions coming out of the reversal of Roe v. Wade: frustration, sadness, fear, anger.
Cheryl Hazelton, who is featured in the show, writes in her artist statement, “I’m terrified of what the future might bring. I need to do something … anything … to support the fight against this obvious aggression.” Meanwhile, Emma Self Treadwell writes, “If it were up to me, I’d line the walls of Congress with uteruses as a reminder that we are here, and we are all around you … so choose wisely what you do with our rights.”
Mary Jo Karimnia’s The Fall 3 (Photo: Courtesy the Artist)
Overall, each piece points to the consensus that, as artist Jenee Fortier writes, “Access to safe abortion services is a human right. None of us are safe until all of us are safe.”
Abortion rights supporters march on Beale Street on May 14, 2022. (photo by Chris McCoy)
Hundreds gathered in the hot sun to rally in support of abortion rights on Saturday in Downtown Memphis. The crowd was protesting the anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision that would reverse the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade, the decision which affirmed women’s Constitutional right to abortion via their right to privacy.
A Planned Parenthood of Memphis and North Mississippi official declined to estimate how many attended the Bans Off Tennessee protest, beyond noting more than 1,200 had signed up for the event through the organization’s online organizing portal. The rally crowd spilled out of Ida B. Wells Plaza, dwarfing the dozen or so Proud Boys counter-protesters, who flashed white supremacist hand signs at the line of feminist protestors facing them across Beale Street.
A Proud Boy flashes a white power hand sign at abortion rights protestors. (photo by Chris McCoy)
Among the speakers at the hour-long rally were Tennessee House Representative London Lamar, scientist and Shelby County Democratic Party chairwoman Gabby Salinas, Planned Parenthood organizers Antoine Dandridge and Aerris Newton, Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, and candidate for Tennessee State Senate Ruby Powell Dennis.
Planned Parenthood organizer Aerris Newton speaks next to the statue of Ida B. Wells. (photo by Chris McCoy)
After the rally, most of the attendees braved the heat to march down Beale Street, where tourists and revelers watched and took pictures of the throng. At one point, a street singer incorporated the marchers’ chant “My body, my choice” into a blues song.
Abortion rights protestors march down Beale Street. (photo by Chris McCoy) A spectator applauds the marchers on Beale Street. (photo by Chris McCoy)
The marchers turned onto Main Street, where their chants of “No justice, no peace” echoed through the urban canyons. While taking pictures of the crowd, this reporter almost ran over Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis, who was cheering on the marchers from the south sidewalk.
Abortion rights protestors march past the Orpheum in Downtown Memphis. (photo by Chris McCoy)
By this time, the tiny counter-protest had melted away. Beyond the occasional thumbs-down along the route, there were few signs of dissent from the marchers message in support of women’s rights to make their own reproductive health decisions.
Abortion rights protestors arrive at the National Civil Rights Museum. (photo by Chris McCoy)
The energized crowd arrived for a second rally at the National Civil Rights Museum, where organizer Newton led chants. Cohen thanked the marchers for braving the heat and told the crowd he was with them “one million percent.” Volunteers handed out water bottles as the protesters mixed about, sharing their stories of experiences with abortion and their personal awakening to the cause. No violence or arrests were observed.
Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-9) rallies the crowd at the National Civil Rights Museum. (photo by Chris McCoy)
Phil Roeder | Creative Commons | Wikimedia Commons
I’m probably going to get a few things wrong in this column. Not factually wrong, but I am speaking from a position of privilege, which colors my perspective in ways that doubtless haven’t even occurred to me, try as I have to educate myself. I’m a white, straight man. True, I don’t own property, nor am I an evangelical Christian, but for all intents and purposes, I look a lot like the only group of people some Americans deem worthy of having rights. I have a presumption of my own bodily autonomy that some people have never enjoyed. So I’m going to write with the urgency I feel, and I might make some missteps. This is too important, though, and my platform is too prominent, for me not to risk making a fool of myself for a good cause.
Last night, as of this writing, Politico broke the news that the Supreme Court has, in a draft of a majority opinion, voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that guaranteed federal protections for abortion rights. Supreme Court drafts change, of course, so this might not be set in stone. Votes could change. Still, this leak seems to confirm that we’re on a course we’ve been on for some time.
To repeat a phrase I’ve made much use of in recent years, I’m disgusted but not at all surprised. In the Flyer’s March 24th cover story, “A Human Rights Disaster,” writer Chris McCoy covered the uncertain future of abortion rights in Tennessee. He spoke with multiple sources for the story, and every proponent of legal abortion access was clear about which way the wind was blowing: The right to a safe and legal abortion was in imminent danger. Today, I wish we could be accused of being alarmists.
I know this is a touchy topic for some. My question is, if you are one of the Tennesseans celebrating this news, what have you done to make those seeking abortions safer? Do you advocate for systemic access to medical care? Social services for poor mothers? What have you done to protect women and people with uteruses in the workplace, to combat the gender pay gap, to reduce the hold of hierarchical, patriarchal power dynamics in every aspect of life? Are you for federally protected paid parental leave? Do you want sex education taught in schools, free afterschool programs for teens?
If you haven’t taken any of these and many other possible steps, if you voted for an anti-choice candidate and shared a political meme on social media and then patted yourself on the back for doing your part, you can’t in all honesty call yourself pro-life. You’re pro-forced birth, and there’s no other way to look at it.
When we get right down to it, it’s simple. Abortion is healthcare, and everyone deserves access to healthcare. That’s it. End of story. There are so many ways a pregnancy can be life-threatening for the pregnant person. And as for unwanted pregnancies, well, I truly don’t see how that’s anyone’s business but the pregnant person and their doctor.
I know that some people, on grounds of a religious objection to the termination of a pregnancy, will argue about the unborn child’s life. I hope they bring that same energy to advocating for universal healthcare and against the death penalty. Those folks aside, though, this seems to me to be about the consolidation of power. And I don’t think it ends with Roe. The constitutionally protected right to privacy doesn’t just support the right to an abortion. It’s also the legal reason behind access to birth control, for example, a right Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn has been publicly critical of. And Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion uses some troubling language, namely that rights must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Call me a progressive alarmist reactionary, but that doesn’t sound like someone who values any social justice progress made in the last 100 years. Some abhorent practices have deep roots in U.S. tradition.
Republicans have campaigned on overturning Roe for decades. What happens if they achieve that goal, as it seems they will? Do you think they’ll just declare mission accomplished, pack up, and go home? No. Look to comments made recently about interracial marriage, about LGBTQ+ rights. Look at the panic about trans people in sports. It’s not about the sports, folks.
Republicans aren’t alone though. Protecting Roe has been a campaign promise and a fundraising tactic for Democrats for as long as I’ve been an adult able to vote. Is that all it is — a carrot to dangle during election years? It would be nice to see a coordinated, unified response from Democrat leadership, but all I expect is a flurry of fundraising emails hitting my inbox.
I wish I had suggestions. I certainly think the filibuster needs to go. I think President Biden should sit senators Manchin and Sinema down and explain that they need to get with the program.
Instead of offering an actionable plan, I’m writing my conscience. This is wrong. It’s regressive and cruel, and anyone putting lofty ideals before the real-world lives that will be lost is the cruelest of fools.
Remember, ending Roe won’t end abortions any more than Prohibition ended alcohol consumption. All it will do is end safe abortions — and end lives.
Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi (Photo: Courtesy Savannah Bearden)
Ashley B. Coffield is a 51-year-old public health professional who holds a master’s degree in public administration from Texas A&M University. The mother of two college-age sons taught public policy at her alma mater Rhodes College for nine years, helped create the Snowden School Foundation, and serves as a deacon at Idlewild Presbyterian Church. Sometimes, when she’s walking to her car after work, people call her a murderer.
As CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, Coffield is on the front lines of one of the most consequential political battles of our time: the drive by conservative Christians and their Republican allies to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now that the Supreme Court seems poised to strip women of their constitutional right to safely obtain an abortion, Coffield and her allies are bracing for a return to the bad old days of limited reproductive rights — and perhaps worse.
“This is a human rights disaster,” Coffield says.
Protest against anti-abortion legislation (Photo: Courtesy Savannah Bearden)
The Rise and Fall of Roe v. Wade The debate over abortion rights in the United States is almost as old as the republic itself. In 1821, Connecticut passed the first law banning abortions in America. But juries would prove reluctant to convict women accused under such statutes, so the rare enforcement actions were usually taken against abortion providers. By the late 1960s, abortion on demand was available in five states and the District of Columbia. Women seeking abortions in the rest of the country either traveled to one of those states or resorted to less than legal means to end unwanted pregnancies. In some places, secret feminist organizations such as Chicago’s Jane Collective dodged police stings to provide safe and clean services. But for the most part, obtaining an abortion in the pre-Roe world meant paying exorbitant sums to back-alley practitioners, who may or may not have been doctors, and hoping for the best. In big cities, hospitals had entire wards devoted to treating women injured by unsafe abortion attempts.
“Abortion rights are important because it gets at the dignity of the individual and the autonomy of the individual to make decisions about their bodies and their lives,” Coffield says. “Without abortion rights, people are subject to the whims of fertilization and pregnancy.”
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court agreed by a vote of 7-2. Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion found that precedents such as Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized contraception, had established a right of privacy, and the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments extended that right to include a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy.
But what many advocates thought would be the end of a long fight turned out to be just the beginning of a new phase. Abortion opponents who believe human life begins at conception, not at birth or at the quickening, organized a counter-offensive. They seized upon Roe’s framework that made first trimester abortion legal in all circumstances while allowing reasonable restrictions to protect the mother’s health in the second trimester onward to chip away at the right to abortion. “The most recent case, Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey, from the ’90s, is really the current statement of the law,” says Steve Mulroy, the Bredesen Professor of Law at the University of Memphis. That decision replaced Roe’s trimester-based framework with a standard based on fetal viability and allowed abortion restrictions as long as they don’t impose an “undue burden” on women seeking to exercise their reproductive rights.
Meanwhile, the Republican party discovered that abortion was an issue that allowed them to mobilize a large number of single-issue voters who could be counted on to show up at the polls. Ever since the Gallup organization began polling on abortion rights in 1975, a solid majority of voters have indicated they support abortion rights. In the most recent poll, conducted in 2021, 48 percent of respondents said abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 32 percent said abortion should be legal under all circumstances. Only 19 percent of respondents said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances.
Even though support for the Roe consensus of regulated abortion has hovered around 80 percent for decades, abortion opponents have been steadily gaining ground in state legislatures, including Tennessee’s, where anti-abortion Republicans now hold a veto-proof supermajority. “I think people have taken this right for granted, and sometimes it is just a matter of human nature, where you don’t realize what you’ve got until it’s gone,” says Francie Hunt, executive director of Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood. “The vast majority of people are pro-choice, but that may not be a make-it-or-break-it issue that they are voting on. They may be voting on personality, or they may be voting on other factors. I kind of feel like, if you can’t trust me to make my own decisions about my own family, then you don’t deserve my vote.”
Coffield is blunt about the reproductive rights movements’ failures of the last 30 years. “We lost elections that were really critical to protecting our rights. That’s the bottom line: We lost. When Trump was elected, we knew we had four to six years left of Roe because of the opportunities he would have appointing justices to the Supreme Court.”
In February 2016 when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ignored 150 years of precedent by refusing to allow confirmation hearings for Democratic President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. In 2017, McConnell shepherded the newly installed President Trump’s nominee Neil Gorsuch through the confirmation process. In 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had been the swing vote in favor of preserving abortion rights in the Casey decision, retired, and Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace him. On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a feminist icon who had long warned about the fragility of abortion rights, died 38 days before the election. On her deathbed, she told her granddaughter, “My fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Instead, McConnell, who had held up Garland’s nomination for 10 months during the previous presidential election, sped the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett through in one month. Ironically, Barrett and Coffield are both Rhodes College alumnae, graduating only two years apart. “It’s Shakespearean,” says Coffield. “But also, it’s all the elections that our side hasn’t won at the state level.”
“I think there are at least three or four justices who, in prior opinions, have indicated a willingness to overturn Roe,” says Mulroy. “The new Trump appointees definitely seem particularly pro-life. So there’s a very good chance that Roe will be overturned.”
Pro-choice individuals attend a hearing on HB 2779, which would allow private citizens to sue anyone who performs or facilitates an abortion. (Photos: Courtesy The Tennessee Holler)
States of Confusion As Republicans, buoyed by a hard core of anti-abortion voters who show up for low-turnout elections, took over more state legislatures, they have passed laws designed to test the limits of abortion rights by imposing ever more stringent restrictions, challenging the notion of what constitutes an “undue burden.” Two cases have emerged that could end universal abortion rights in America. The first is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerns a 2018 Mississippi law banning all abortions after 15 weeks of gestation. Federal appeals courts have prevented the law, which violates the 24-week viability standard set by Roe and Casey, from taking effect. But last May, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the state’s appeal, leading observers to believe that the new 6-3 conservative majority is looking to overturn abortion law precedent.
The second case is Texas SB 8, a law passed in May 2021 which bans abortions after six weeks, long before many women even know they’re pregnant. SB 8 and other copycat bills, including one recently introduced in Tennessee by state Rep. Rebecca Alexander (R-Jonesborough), provide a novel solution to the constitutional problems abortion opponents face. Instead of instructing law enforcement to arrest women and abortion providers, it allows private citizens to sue anyone who performs or facilitates an abortion for no less than $10,000 in damages, plus attorney’s fees and court costs. On March 15th, at a Tennessee State House Health Subcommittee hearing in Nashville, Alexander said, “While the Texas law prohibits abortion once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually six weeks, the Tennessee language proposes to prohibit all abortion. Courts have blocked other states from imposing similar restrictions, but this law differs significantly because it leaves enforcement up to private citizens through civil lawsuits.”
When pressed at the hearing by state Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) as to whether or not her bill would allow anti-abortion activists to sue anyone attempting to help a pregnant rape victim who sought an abortion, Alexander responded, “My assumption is that they could because it says any citizen other than the rapist.”
Alexander did not respond to interview requests from the Memphis Flyer.
Mulroy says “abortion bounty laws” are “designed to basically prevent judicial review by making it difficult for a plaintiff trying to enforce abortion rights to find someone to sue. You could not sue the people who brought the lawsuit because they’re private citizens and they’re not representatives of the state. Then you could not sue the state because they are not the ones who are actually bringing the anti-abortion enforcement action. So it’s supposed to be sort of a loophole to prevent effective judicial review of a bill, which would restrict abortion rights in a way contrary to existing constitutional precedent.”
Mulroy thinks this “cynical ploy to delay judicial review” is ultimately doomed to fail because, eventually, a government official like a county court clerk will have to attempt to enforce a judgment, opening up an avenue for litigation. Last September, the United States Supreme Court declined an emergency motion to stop enforcement of the law while its constitutionality was still being litigated.
“It’s evolved very quickly because I would never have guessed that the U.S. Supreme Court would not have saved those women in Texas,” says Coffield.
Anti-Abortion Terrorism On February 28, 2022, Republicans in the Senate filibustered the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have enshrined the right to abortion in law. Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn (R) released a statement calling the bill, which had previously passed the House, “an attack against the health of women and unborn children. I voted against this legislation which would open the pathway for abortion on demand and legalize late-term abortions. The bill would make every state a late-term abortion state, force abortion drugs by mail, invalidate state laws to prevent coerced abortion, remove informed consent, and prevent states from stopping gruesome dismemberment abortion procedures.”
More recently, on March 20th, in a video questioning the judicial philosophies of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Blackburn claims that Griswold v. Connecticut, which made birth control a protected right, is “constitutionally unsound.”
Such hyperbolic language is increasingly typical of abortion opponents, says Hunt. “I think Tennessee has grown much more ideological. It’s almost like they’re moving toward a theocracy.”
In the eight years Hunt has worked on Capitol Hill, she says, “a lot of the Democratic lawmakers have been good in terms of defending a pregnant person’s bodily autonomy and their right to make decisions over their own body. We’ve also seen several Republicans who themselves don’t really agree with their own party’s view on abortion. They might think that abortion is wrong, but they also think that it’s a private matter that needs to be left up to the family. But they are not going to cross their own party. And then we have what I would say is an unhealthy majority of folks in the legislature that are completely ideologically driven.”
Decades of increasingly hard-line rhetoric from the right has led to violent action on the ground. “We had our health center torched to the ground in Knoxville,” says Hunt. “We all felt, and I do believe, that’s a direct outcome from these political leaders who are absolutely extremist and have no moderation in how they talk about healthcare.”
There is a history of anti-abortion terrorism in the United States. In 1996, Christian Identity terrorist Eric Rudolph bombed the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, killing two and injuring 111 people. He went on to bomb abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, as well as a lesbian bar in Atlanta. At trial, Rudolph said his motivation for bombing the Olympics was to “confound, anger, and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.” In 2009, Dr. George Tiller, who performed abortions, was murdered during a Sunday morning service in the Wichita, Kansas, Lutheran church where he was an usher. His killer, Scott Roeder, told the AP that he shot Tiller because “preborn children’s lives were in imminent danger.”
In January 2021, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, someone fired a shotgun through the front door of the Planned Parenthood health center in Knoxville. Coffield was just down the street when it happened. “That scared the hell out of us,” she says. “We had never had an act of violence at one of our facilities in Tennessee in all the years that we’ve been here, and we’ve been in Memphis since 1941. There was always a threat — our protestors have always felt threatening to us — but nobody had ever acted on it before.”
No one was arrested for the shooting. “Thus far, the suspect from that has not been identified despite the best efforts of investigators,” says Scott Erland, communications manager for the Knoxville Police Department.
On December 31, 2021, the Knoxville health center was destroyed in what was determined to be an act of arson. Knoxville Fire Department Assistant Chief Mark Wilbanks says that while “a considerable amount of evidence has been collected from the scene,” no new information about the crime has been uncovered. “There have not been any arrests at this time, and I do not have any suspect information.”
“I’m still processing that our actual health center burned down,” says Coffield. “I still wake up in the morning and think that it’s there and that we’re gonna be seeing patients there today. I have to remind myself that it’s gone and that our patients don’t have anywhere to go.”
What the Future Holds “I think so many people have had positive experiences with abortion,” says Coffield. “It’s been a lifesaver for so many people — for somebody that you know — and it will continue to be a necessary part of healthcare.”
The immediate future of abortion rights in Tennessee is “gloomy,” Coffield says. “When we heard oral arguments around the Mississippi case, it was discouraging. We didn’t see any bright signs there that [the Supreme Court] are not going to significantly curtail, if not overturn Roe altogether. So we have to prepare for the worst because we have patients who are still gonna need services.”
The court’s decision could come as early as June. “Our legislature has already decided to ban abortion,” says Coffield. “We have a trigger law, which, if Roe is overturned, means abortion is illegal with no exceptions within 30 days.”
Women needing abortions would be forced to travel out of state. “In the west end of Tennessee, unfortunately, the only place that people have to go that’s in driving distance will probably be Illinois,” Coffield says.
Four generations of women who have grown up taking reproductive rights for granted are in for a rude awakening, says Coffield. “They’re going to have fewer options to control their fertility and pregnancy. It’s going to cost them more to get the services that they need. They’re going to need to be vigilant about avoiding pregnancy. If they are pregnant, they’re going to have to know early and they’re going to have to reach out to Planned Parenthood and other providers to get all of their options as quickly as possible. We’ve talked about emphasizing some of the services we have like emergency contraception and making sure people have that available to them at all times. It needs to be in your medicine cabinet. We need to reemphasize effective forms of birth control and compliance with birth control. We need to emphasize that you need to have a pregnancy test at home and ready at all times so that you can find out as early as possible if you’re pregnant.”
If the Supreme Court cuts so deeply into the right of privacy that it invalidates Griswold v. Connecticut, extremists could go even further. “Their lack of respect for people’s individual rights and to their right to comprehensive reproductive healthcare doesn’t bode well for birth control,” says Coffield.
Planned Parenthood will continue the fight. “Our plan is to dig into organizing. We have three pillars to our mission, which is education, advocacy, and healthcare. The education and advocacy components won’t go away. Those are going to be more important than ever because we’re not gonna be able to turn around this human rights disaster without education and organizing. … Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. We are going to turn this around. It’s just gonna take a long time — and we can’t do it alone.”
A small group or anti-abortion protestors were met Wednesday morning with a small group of counter protesters dressed as characters from “The Handmaid’s Tale” at Planned Parenthood of Memphis.
A counter protester, who identified herself only as “June,” said her group stood silently alongside — but opposed to — the abortion protesters. June said the affair lasted for about an hour between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Wednesday and remained calm throughout.
A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision Friday to block a Tennessee abortion ban that was signed into law last year.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with Middle Tennessee District Judge William Campbell’s preliminary injunction, which blocked the law from taking effect shortly after it passed.
The law bans abortion at certain gestational ages beginning at six weeks. It also bans abortion based on a Down syndrome diagnosis or because of the gender or race of the fetus.
The provisions of the law are “constitutionally unsound,” Judge Martha Daughtrey wrote in the opinion.
“Although this circuit’s recent — and alarming — decisions have broadened the extent to which the government may impede a person’s constitutional right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, the law remains clear that if a regulation is a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion, it is invalid,” the opinion reads. “We take note that state legislatures recently have passed more anti-abortion regulations than perhaps at any other time in this country’s history.However, this development is not a signal to the courts to change course.”
Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee applauded the court’s decision.
“People should be able to make decisions for themselves about whether and when to become a parent, without politicians interfering,” Weinberg said. “ Today’s ruling is critical to Tennesseans’ ability to continue receiving safe and legal abortion care. We will continue to fight this unconstitutional law until it is struck down for good.”
Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, said the decision allows abortion to remain safe and legal in Tennessee despite a “national, coordinated attack on abortion rights.”
“We trust our patients to make their own fully informed reproductive healthcare decisions,” Coffield said. “We are thankful that the court ruled to protect that trust and ensure that we can continue to provide expert, compassionate abortion care in our state.”
The abortion ban that went into effect in Texas on Wednesday is a part of a national agenda to end abortion access in the country, according to the head of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi.
“People in Tennessee have got to watch what’s happening in Texas really closely because Gov. [Bill] Lee and the General Assembly could very easily replicate S.B. 8. here,” said president and CEO Ashley Coffield.
The attacks on abortion access are relentless and have been ramping up in Tennessee, she said, citing a 2020 executive order from Lee that excluded abortions as an essential healthcare service.
Texas law, S.B. 8, which bans abortion at around six weeks or when there is cardiac activity, went into effect Wednesday. Abortion providers say this is before many women even know they are pregnant.
“This means as of today any pregnant person who lives in Texas will simply not be able to access an abortion,” Coffield said.
The law makes no exceptions for pregnacies resulting from rape or incest.
Unlike other six-week bans, Texas’ law turns over enforcement of the ban from the government to private citizens. The law allows anyone to sue abortion providers and anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. Those sued could have to pay up to $10,000 in damages. Coffield said the law was designed to “nefariously skirt” being struck down in court as unconstitutional.
Tennessee passed a “heartbeat bill” last year, but it was immediately blocked by a federal court from going into effect. However, the court allowed a portion of the law, which prohibits abortions based on a Down syndrome diagnosis or because of the gender or race of the fetus, to take effect.
The case is currently being reviewed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Under current Tennessee law, abortions are illegal after viability (which is around 24 weeks), except in cases where a woman’s life is endangered. Among other provisions, Tennessee requires parental consent for minors seeking abortion and a mandatory 48-hour waiting period before women can receive an abortion. This measure was ruled legal by a U.S. Appeals court last month.
Most recently, the state passed a law requiring medical providers who provide abortions to bury or cremate the fetal remains. Coffield calls this a “hateful and intrusive measure.”
“These mandates were written by politicians and not doctors in an effort to shame people who need an abortion and make abortion providers jumo through more costly and unnecessary hoops to provide healthcare,” Coffield said. “These mandates just tell us that the legislature and Gov. Lee will stop at nothing to take our rights away.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case on Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban later this year, which could overturn Roe v. Wade, Coffield said.
“Unfortunately, we’re starting to think about what it will take to help our patients find care outside of Tennessee if the worst happens,” Coffield said. “Without Roe, there is no protection for abortions in Tennessee. No one should have to prepare for losing access to essential healthcare or have the added burden of figuring out how to find an out-of-state healthcare provider because of politicians.”
The Tennessee General Assembly will work to pass an amended budget and recess to “to focus on an immediate plan of action” for the coronavirus outbreak and at least one group lauded the move as it pauses action on certain bills.
On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Senate Speaker Randy McNally, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton issued the following statement:
“Over the last week, we have remained in close contact with the state’s health leaders, and we have continued to carefully monitor the complex and aggressive COVID-19 virus in Tennessee.
“The latest guidance from both the CDC and Department of Health requires us to take unprecedented action. In the best interests of public health, we have jointly decided to limit all remaining legislative business to fulfilling our constitutional requirement of passing a balanced budget, and any associated actions that will ensure Tennessee can keep its doors open.
“This is a serious time for our state and country, and we all must make adjustments in response to this threat. Our approach will take into account the unique public health challenges this complex virus presents, as well as the economic disruption likely to occur as a result of its spread.
“Passing an amended budget now and recessing will allow the General Assembly to focus on an immediate plan of action, while still determining needs down the road. This pathway forward should only be reserved for extraordinary circumstances.
“We will continue operating out of an abundance of caution and take additional action if it becomes necessary.”
Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, called the move “wise” and also said it pauses some “extreme legislation to ban abortion.”
“Today the General Assembly made a wise decision to recess and focus its attention on the crisis at hand,” Cofield said in a statement. “We should all be grateful for their willingness to put politics aside in an emergency, and this means the extreme legislation to ban abortion is delayed for the time being.
“We will continue to monitor the situation, and we will be prepared to fight for the Tennesseans who depend on abortion access, should circumstances change.”
The move also pauses other legislation, like Lee’s permit-less gun-carry bill, a bill to make the Christian Bible the state’s official book, a chemical castration bill for some sex offenders, and more.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee wants to make it a Class C felony to perform an abortion in the state. State lawmakers will consider this and three other pieces of anti-abortion legislation Tuesday.
The governor’s proposal is an amendment to SB 2196. That bill is intended to delay the trial of a physician accused of performing a “partial-birth” abortion in order for the state medical board to determine if the abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother.
The amendment to the bill has not yet been posted to the Tennessee General Assembly website, but was obtained Friday by Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi (PPTNM).
Ashley Coffield, CEO of PPTNM, said the governor is proposing “one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country.”
“This is nothing short of a total assault on women,” Coffield said. “This is a fight for our lives, and we will put everything we have into defeating this legislation.”
The 31-page amendment repeatedly states that Tennessee “has a legitimate, substantial, and compelling interest in protecting the rights of all human beings, including the fundamental and absolute right of unborn human beings to life, liberty, and all rights protected by the (14th) and (9th) Amendments.”
Specifically, the legislation would make it unlawful to perform an abortion on a woman where a fetal heartbeat is detected, which usually occurs around the sixth week of pregnancy. The bill also includes bans at several stages throughout the pregnancy from six weeks to 24 weeks if the heartbeat provision is struck down in court.
Violation of the law for physicians would result in a Class C Felony, which according to Tennessee Code Annotated, could result in a three-to-five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $10,000. The law would not punish women who seek abortions.
“Politicians are putting the health and lives of Tennessee women at risk,” Coffield said. “These bans on safe, legal abortion will have real costs — expensive legal costs and human costs for the women and families who need reproductive health care. Banning abortion does not eliminate abortion. It makes it illegal and unsafe.”
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The legislation would also ban abortions based on the race, sex, or potential disability of the child. The bill also includes a provision that would require physicians to show women their ultrasound, give a description of the fetus, and play the fetal heartbeat before a women can choose to have an abortion.
“The unique nature of abortion and its potential physical and mental health risks, as well as the ultimate result of the death of an unborn child, necessitates that this state ensure every woman considering an abortion is provided with adequate comprehensive information before deciding to obtain an abortion,” reads the amendment.
The Tennessee Senate Judiciary committee is slated to discuss this legislation and three other pieces of anti-abortion legislation Tuesday, March 3rd beginning at 3 p.m.
The committee will also discuss SB1236, which like the aforementioned legislation, prohibits abortion from the time a fetal heartbeat is detected, unless there is a medical emergency warranting the abortion. It will also hear SB1780, referred to as the Rule of Life Act. This act essentially seeks to group the rights of unborn children under the 9th Amendment, and “recognize the balance of priorities between the life of unborn persons and abortion set forth in the State’s Constitution.”
The act states that life begins at conception at the time the egg is fertilized and that a pregnancy is viable at the time a heartbeat can be detected.
Also on Tuesday at 9 a.m., in the the House Health committee, legislators will discuss HB 2568, which would require clinics that performed more than 50 abortions in the past year to inform patients that chemical abortion is reversible after the first dose of the two-dose treatment.
A PPTNM petition to lawmakers calls this bill dangerous and worries it will force physicians to provide patients with “medically inaccurate, misleading” information that could harm a patient’s health.
“Lawmakers like you should focus on expanding healthcare access in the state, not denying it,” the petition reads. “Women’s health and lives should not be used as political pawns for anti-choice politicians to cater to anti-choice interest groups. Given Tennessee’s high rates of infant mortality, unintended pregnancy and teen births, it is time to focus on legislation that would increase access to preventive care, not ban access to critical healthcare.”
Molly Quinn, OUTMemphis executive director (center left), and Ashley Coffield, PPTNM president (center right), speak during a news conference in front of OUTMemphis’ new administrative office building.
OUTMemphis will open a new adminstrative office building and donation center at I-240 and Summer soon, thanks to a donation from Planned Parenthood of Tennessee & North Mississippi (PPTNM).
Leaders from the two organizations announced the move Thursday at the building close to the Summer Quartet Drive In theater and the PPTNM health center. The building was a call center for PPTNM, but the organization moved that function into its Poplar headquarters. OUTMemphis
OUTMemphis’ new adminstrative office building.
Molly Quinn, OUTMemphis executive director, said the new 4,500-square-foot facility will raise the regional platform for its work and increase the “capacity to serve the Mid-Southerners who need us the most.”
It will be home to all administrative office space. That move will open more space at the organization’s Cooper-Young facility for programming and expanded health services. The new facility will also be a donation drop-off and distribution venue for clothes, furniture, and hygiene supplies for LGBTQ+ people under age 24. OUTMemphis
OUTMemphis’ Cooper-Young community center.
“[PPTNM and OUTMemphis] work together on a simple principle that unites us that all bodies and minds are good, righteous, and deserving of health, pleasure, safety, and joy,” Quinn said. “This building and the growth it represents are truly unparalleled contribution to the assets of Memphis and the community we serve.”
Ashley Coffield, PPTNM president, said regardless of where OUTMemphis would have expanded, “Their strength helps us and vice versa.” She said OUTMemphis has stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” with PPTNM during attacks on the organization over the years, “and we stand with them as well.” Toby Sells
Molly Quinn, OUTMemphis executive director (left), and Ashley Coffield, PPTNM president (right), speak during a news conference in front of OUTMemphis’ new administrative office building.
“Planned Parenthood’s doors are open to all everyone regardless of gender expression, gender identity, or gender orientation,” Coffield said. “We believe all deserve high-quality and affordable health care and good information about sexuality and sexual health, no matter who they are or where they live.
“That’s why we work in partnership with the LGBTQ+ community and expand their access to health care.”
Quinn said construction of OUTMemphis’ youth emergency center and overnight shelter, called The Metamorphosis Project, begins Friday morning. She said she expects the facility to be up and running by January 2020. OUTMemphis
OUTMemphis’ proposed youth emergency services and overnight shelter building.
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Toby Sells 
OUTMemphis