I had a fierce sense of justice when I was younger. I got in trouble in elementary school for pouring strawberry applesauce on the white basketball shorts of a boy who was bullying my friend. In church, when our Sunday school teacher would ask for “strong boys” to volunteer to put away folding chairs, I would carry as many chairs as I could under my small arms, to drive home the point that girls are strong, too.
After high school, I left my hometown and moved to Memphis for college. Sophomore year, I interned at Planned Parenthood. It was there that I learned about how much Planned Parenthood does for accessible healthcare outside of abortions, including but not limited to cancer screenings, prenatal care, and STD screenings and treatments. I also learned that we were expected to maintain a sense of decorum in the face of the pro-life protesters who set up camp outside of the building daily. We were not to give them any reason to harm us, defame Planned Parenthood, or paint us as angry or irrational. One day as I was walking into my internship, one of the protestors yelled at me, “Murderer! You are going to Hell for killing your baby!” She had so much venom and hatred in her voice, it took everything in me not to respond. Another thing I learned as a Planned Parenthood intern was that, quite commonly, people who once protested outside of the building would come in to seek abortions for themselves or for a loved one. We were not to chastise or shame these people. A few weeks after the protestor yelled at me, I came to Planned Parenthood as a patient to get tested for STDs. The same woman who had screamed at me weeks before was sitting in the waiting room, holding her stomach and impatiently tapping her foot. We made brief eye contact, and she turned her face away.
In college, I had multiple friends seek abortions. Each of them had a good reason, not that any of them owed that to anyone. One of my friends was raped and told me stone-faced that if she was forced to deliver her rapists’ baby, she would kill herself. I believe her. I have read first-hand accounts from people who lived pre-Roe v. Wade, who have similar stories but with sadder outcomes: Their friends died, by their own hand or by botched back-alley abortions. Restricting access to abortion causes death and suffering. I have friends who would not be thriving, or would not be here at all, if they were denied access to abortion. Several of my friends ,who had abortions when we were young, now have happy, healthy, wanted children.
The legality of Roe v. Wade stands upon the concept that we as adult citizens of the United States have a right to privacy and equal protections, based upon the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Other Supreme Court decisions based on the same amendment include Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools, and Loving v. Virginia, which federally legalized interracial marriage. If the Supreme Court can overturn a landmark case providing equal reproductive rights, they may seek to overturn other civil rights decisions. Our very right to privacy is at stake. In fact, this is already happening to transgender and gay people who are having their rights eroded nationally. These struggles for bodily autonomy are linked together. Our fellow citizens facing injustice is a threat to all justice itself.
The history of the “pro-life” movement is steeped in racism. In the 1960s, before Roe v. Wade passed, being anti-abortion was seen as a “Catholic issue,” and supporting access to abortion in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the mother’s life was bipartisan. But the far right was troubled by all of the headway made by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in desegregating schools. Far-right evangelical leaders were opposed to desegregation and viewed abortion as an easy way to galvanize and unite Christians to vote far-right evangelical leaders into office. Defending the fetus was their political rallying cry, but defending racial segregation was the end goal.
Classism also plays a role in who is able to access abortion. Wealthy people will always be able to access abortion. They can fly themselves, their wives, mistresses, or children to a state or country where abortion is legal. Making abortion illegal creates barriers to abortion for the most financially vulnerable around us, who cannot afford to take off work for a day, much less fly to another state to access an abortion, and who are disproportionately people of color, particularly in the states most likely to outlaw abortion. These are the people who will be most likely to seek an illegal abortion in the event of an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy. They are the people who are most likely to die.
Do not let voting be the only measure you take. We are set to lose the protections of Roe under a Democratic-controlled House, Senate, and presidency. We must pressure our elected officials to codify Roe into federal law. We must protest, with our wallets and our voices. We must not be afraid to use the word abortion. We must drive home the reality that abortion is safe, normal, and a societal good. We must be outspoken, even if we cannot become pregnant ourselves. Remember, abortion is an issue of human rights, and safe abortions actually preserve life, rather than destroy it.
When I was a child, I had a fierce sense of justice. Now I am an adult, and that sense of justice has calcified into a deep anger at the injustices that marginalized people face in our supposedly free and equal country. When a document was leaked from the Supreme Court outlining their probable future decision to overturn Roe, many of my friends cried when they found out. I have not cried. I am furious. I need you, regardless of your age, gender, religion, or ability to bear children, to be furious with me, to inform yourself, and to take action, because outlawing abortion is an egregious violation of human liberties that will impact each and every one of us. Our right to privacy and equality is at stake, and we must fight.
Louise Page is an independent singer/songwriter based in Memphis. She is a classically trained pianist with a degree in Creative Writing from Rhodes College.
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.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Thursday that he will submit a “comprehensive pro-life” bill this legislative session that will put the state “at the forefront of protecting life.”
Surrounded by state GOP lawmakers, Lee made the announcement of the near-total abortion ban just one day after the 47th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The governor called it a “monumental step forward in celebrating, cherishing, and defending life.”
“I believe we have a special responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of our community,” Lee said. “And no one is more vulnerable than the unborn.”
Last year’s “heartbeat bill” passed in the House but failed in the Senate. This bill has additional restrictive provisions. Lee said these provisions “make it a stronger bill” and are a part of a legal strategy. The provisions include prohibiting abortion motivated by the sex, race, or diagnosis of a disability, as well as requiring women to view their ultrasound.
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“We know that when a mother views her unborn child and hears a heartbeat, hearts and minds are changed,” Lee said of the ultrasound provision.
Following the model of a Missouri law, the bill will also specify that if the heartbeat provision is struck down in court, the abortion ban would kick in at 8, 10, or 12 weeks — the point at which bans have been upheld in court.
“My passion for developing this legislation stems from my commitment to defending the intrinsic dignity of all people,” Lee said.
Rep. William Lambert (R-Portland) is one of the lawmakers pushing the bill.
“It is reprehensible to murder a human being, period, whether that child is in the womb or it’s already drawn his or her first breath,” Lambert said. “Governor, leaders, I wish we had a bigger stage because I think this shows just how powerful this legislation is.”
Lambert said legislators will work out the details of the bill over the next few months, figuring out “exactly how we can accomplish the mission of saving millions of lives.”
Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood
Democratic lawmakers speak against governor’s proposal.
Democratic legislators quickly voiced opposition to the governor’s announcement in a press conference Thursday.
Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville called the governor’s proposal “extreme” and “divisive.”
“This isn’t even legislation at all,” Yabro said. “It’s a litigation strategy. We have real problems to solve in this state. If you went to hearings in this building, just this week we talked about the fact that we provide fewer protections for pregnant women than any other state.”
Sen. Katrina Robinson, who is from Memphis, also spoke at the press conference, saying that Thursday’s announcement is a “stage prop” and “divisive political pawn.”
“It is not a political issue,” Robinson said. “It’s a human rights issue. It’s a women’s rights issue. It’s an issue of families. It’s an issue of being human. I find it very disturbing that this is our first run of political agenda this session.”
Robinson also opposed referring to the legislation as “comprehensive” and “pro-life.”
“I don’t understand that,” she said. “How is it comprehensively pro-life if we don’t provide health care, don’t provide childcare, don’t fund education? That’s pro-life. This is not pro-life legislation.”
Robinson said with Tennessee’s high infant-mortality rate and high number of unintended and teen pregnancies, the governor should be focused on preventative care, contraception access, and policies that will provide youth with sexual education to reduce unintended pregnancies.
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Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood also responded to the governor’s announcement in an open letter to the governor and legislators.
“We, the undersigned, are called by our lived experience as parents, caregivers, and family members to stand up for the dignity and autonomy of pregnant people,” the letter reads in part. “We have lived through typical and complicated pregnancies, and we are raising children we deeply love. We oppose all attempts to criminalize and restrict abortion access.”
The letter continues saying that the proposed legislation will not eliminate abortions, “but will force pregnant people to turn to unregulated and often dangerous attempts to end their pregnancies.”
The letter also notes that the legislation would force women to become parents, including those who are survivors of rape or incest.
“Rather than force people to have babies, our state lawmakers should focus on broadly popular ideas to support new families, such as paid leave, access to affordable care, and reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers,” the letter continued.
The letter calls for lawmakers to “recognize that abortion access is a critical issue for current and future families. We trust people who are pregnant to make thoughtful, moral decisions and urge our state leaders to do the same.”
A study done by Vanderbilt University in the fall found that 54 percent of respondents believe Roe v. Wade should be upheld. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters in Tennessee. Of the 54 percent that believe the Supreme Court decision should be upheld, 85 percent were Democrats and 32 percent were Republican.
Last year, a poll done by NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll showed that 77 percent of Americans think the Supreme Court should uphold Roe. v. Wade, while 13 percent want to see it overturned.
If an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution is approved by voters in November, state legislators will have the ability to pass all manner of restrictions on abortion.
“They’ll be able to pass a whole slew of regulations here, the same kind of regulations that are closing clinics all over the country,” said Rebecca Terrell, executive director of Choices Memphis Center for Reproductive Health.
Those include 72-hour waiting periods between the initial doctor consultation and the procedure, mandated counseling that opponents of the amendment fear may include misleading information about abortion risks, and requiring that all second trimester abortions be performed in a hospital, among others.
“It’s not a change in law. It’s an amendment to our constitution. The language is flawed and dangerous and gives carte blanche to the legislature to ban abortion, even when a woman’s health is in danger or if she is a victim of rape or incest,” said Ashley Coffield, executive director of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region, which launched a “Vote No on 1” campaign last week.
In 2000, the Tennessee Supreme Court found that a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion is part of a “fundamental right to privacy,” making privacy rights in the state broader than those provided in Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that ruled that 14th Amendment privacy protections extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.
Because those privacy protections were found to be broader in Tennessee, that 2000 court decision meant several restrictions passed by the General Assembly in 1998, such as the aforementioned waiting periods and counseling, were unconstitutional. Now, if Amendment 1 passes in November, the legislature will have the ability to bring back those restrictions overturned by the court in 2000.
In the states surrounding Tennessee, similar regulations have closed many abortion clinics and patients from other states must travel to Tennessee for the procedure.
The proponents of changing the constitution to allow for abortion restrictions have launched an aggressive “Vote Yes on 1” campaign, and they’re claiming Tennessee is the third most popular “destination for out-of-state abortions.”
“Mississippi has one clinic, and they’re trying to close that. Half the clinics in Louisiana are closing. Texas went from 64 clinics to six. Where are people supposed to go? The fact that we’re still up and running and seeing patients in Tennessee drives them crazy,” Terrell said.
Coffield says that even pro-lifers should be against changing the state constitution to limit privacy rights.
“Not all of us agree about abortion, but I think we can agree that we can’t stand in another woman’s shoes and make a difficult decision for her when she may be faced with a cancer diagnosis or a rape or an incest,” Coffield said.
To fight the passage of Amendment 1, Planned Parenthood has hired a full-time community organizer in AFSCME Director Gail Tyree. She is organizing 13 community action teams to canvas and phone-bank for the “Vote No on 1” campaign prior to the November election.
Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood