Tag: Tennessee Abortion Ban

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Center For Reproductive Rights Sues State Over Near-Total Abortion Ban

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed legal action against the state of Tennessee regarding abortion rights and the near-total ban passed by the state.

The case, Blackmon v. State of Tennessee, was filed on behalf of three women, Nicole Blackmon, Allyson Phillips, and Kaitlyn Dulong, who were “denied necessary and potentially life-saving medical care.” The suit was one of three complaints filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of patients in Idaho, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, who were” denied abortion care despite grave pregnancy complications.’

“Blackmon v. State of Tennessee challenges the limited scope of the ‘emergent medical condition’ exception to Tennessee’s total abortion ban,” said the organization. They said that Tennessee’s abortion ban endangers the lives of pregnant people, and that the medical condition exception “threatens doctors with arbitrary enforcement.”

Plaintiffs also include two obstetricians/gynecologists, Dr. Heather Maune of Nashville, and Dr. Laura Anderson of Franklin. The suit states that the medical condition exception has “put patients’ lives and doctors’ liberty and livelihoods at grave risk.”

According to Tennessee Administrative Code, chapter 1200-12-01-.14, an emergency medical condition refers to a “medical condition manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity, including severe pain, such that it could put the patient’s health in serious jeopardy, cause serious impairment to bodily function, or cause serious dysfunction of any body organ, system, or part without immediate medical attention.”

On August 25, 2022, a Tennessee law went into effect that made providing abortions a felony. The Human Life Protection Act “was passed in 2019 just in case the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade.” The law only allows an abortion in Tennessee if giving birth would kill the pregnant woman or would prevent “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function.”

“Since then, pregnant people in Tennessee have suffered needless physical and emotional pain and harm, including loss of their fertility,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit says the following on behalf of the three women:

  • When Nicole Blackmon found out she was pregnant, she “stopped taking medication needed to treat the symptoms of her various medical conditions to avoid harming her pregnancy.” She later found out that her baby had a “lethal fetal diagnosis,” and was unable to leave Tennessee to get an abortion. Blackmon continued her pregnancy, and gave birth to a stillborn baby during her seventh month of pregnancy.
  • Allie Phillips received the news that the second child she was expecting, Miley Rose, had developed “multiple fetal diagnoses.” Phillips could not get an abortion, and found out that continuing pregnancy “would strain [her] own precarious health.” Phillips raised money through GoFundMe to go to New York for care, but “had to drive her loss far from her own home without the support of her family and friends back in Tennessee.”
  • After undergoing fertility treatments and becoming pregnant with her first child, Katy Dulong was diagnosed with cervical insufficiency. When she was told that she would “inevitably lose the pregnancy,” Dulong was “not given the medication that would have allowed her body to expel the pregnancy promptly without further risk to her own health.” Ten days later, the fetus’ body was in Dulong’s vaginal canal. The suit claims that she could have died from the “lengthy delay in receiving the care that she would have promptly received but for Tennessee’s abortion ban.”

“Abortion is necessary healthcare that is being denied under Tennessee’s abortion ban,” the suit says. “Tennessee’s abortion ban prevents pregnant people and those who may become pregnant from receiving the nationally recognized standard of care they need.”

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Proposed Bill Would Encourage Doula Services

Source: Tennessee State Government

A bill that would allow for the Tennessee Department of Health to “collaborate with the bureau of TennCare in order to study existing doula certification programs” is headed to the House for consideration on April 18.

Senator London Lamar (D-Memphis) introduced Senate Bill 0394, and during a senate floor session on April 13, Lamar moved for third and final consideration of the bill. Lamar explained that as amended, it would rewrite the bill to “create a five-member doula services advisory committee.”

The text of the bill explains that the advisory committee will “advise the department of health by establishing core competencies and standards for the provision of doula services” in Tennessee. The bill also recommends reimbursement rates and fee schedules for TennCare reimbursement for doula services.

The amendment defines a doula as a “birth worker who provides childbirth education, advocacy, and physical, emotional, and nonmedical support for pregnant and postpartum women before, during, and after childbirth.”

“Doulas are vital members of the child birthing team and have proved to reduce the rates of maternal [and] infant mortality,” said Lamar.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the U.S. maternal mortality rate had increased 40 percent from 2020 to 2021.

The report also stated that the rates for Black women “were significantly higher than rates for White and Hispanic women.”

The 2021 Tennessee Maternal Mortality Rate Annual Report showed that “non-Hispanic Black women” are 3.9 times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes compared to “non-Hispanic white women.”  President and CEO Jennifer Pepper of CHOICES: Center for Reproductive Health told the Flyer in March that both the maternal and infant mortality rate crisis in Tennessee is “dire, particularly for Black women.”

While efforts are being made to help reduce Tennessee’s mortality rate, there are other obstacles that stand in the way of this.

Mayoral candidate Michelle McKissack is urging Governor Bill Lee to provide emergency state funding for maternal health after a presentation by the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration last week proposed that $19 million in state funds be used for programs that would have been covered by federal funds. 

According to a statement from McKissack’s office, Tennessee became ineligible for federal Title X funding as a result of “the state’s abortion ban and refusal to provide a full spectrum of reproductive health education that would include information about abortions.”

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, “The HHS Office of Population Affairs (OPA) funds Title X family planning service grantees who support hundreds of subrecipients and thousands of service sites.” HHS defines family planning services as those that are related to “achieving pregnancy, preventing pregnancy, and assisting women, men, and couples with achieving their desired number and spacing of children.”

McKissack said that Lee has “floated the idea of amending the state budget to include $7.5 million in recurring funding for family planning for low-income women,” to replace the Title X grant, however McKissack is calling on elected officials to do more for women, who she refers to as “our most vulnerable population.”

This funding impacts birth control, pregnancy testing and basic infertility services for low-income individuals. According to McKissack, this will have a “deadly” impact on women and mothers in Memphis, especially Black women.

“Lack of access to quality maternal care, lack of access to family planning resources and education, and lack of access to reproductive care that includes abortions, is a trifecta for worsening the number of preventable pregnancy-related deaths in Memphis and statewide,” said  McKissack. “These deaths will primarily be Black women. This is unacceptable.”

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Abortion Ban Rebuke

CREDIT: Maya Smith

In the early hours of Friday morning, the Tennessee General Assembly passed what pro-choice groups are calling the most restrictive abortion ban in the country.

The legislation criminalizes medical professionals who perform abortions after six weeks, while restricting the reasons a women can get an abortion. It also requires women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound, in which the doctor decribes the image and gives the woman the option to view the image.

Maya Smith

A recent pro-choice rally at Memphis Civic Center Plaza

The bill also prohibits abortion at multiple points throughout pregnancy, so that if the six-week ban is struck down in court, access to abortions will still be taken away at later points in the pregnancy. The bill will become law and take effect immediately after it is signed by Gov. Bill Lee, who has already expressed his support of the bill.

Katy Leopard, director of external affairs for CHOICES, said one of the many issues with the bill is that it bans abortion before most women even know they are pregnant.

“Thursday night while most of us were asleep, Tennessee’s primarily Republican legislators passed an anti-choice bill that bans abortion as early as six weeks — before many people even know they are pregnant,” she said. “The bill contains no exceptions for victims of rape or incest and forces providers to give patients misleading and non-medical information about abortion reversal.”

Less than 24 hours after the bill passed, four groups challenged the legislation in court. The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Tennessee, along with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed an emergency lawsuit Friday asking the court to block the bill.

The lawsuit specifically asked the court to determine that the bill is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which ensures the right to due process, privacy, and liberty.

“The courts have long held that politicians cannot interfere in someone else’s personal, private decision to end their pregnancy,” said Thomas H. Castelli, ACLU of Tennessee legal director. “In Tennessee, people of color, people in rural areas, young people, and people with limited incomes already face significant barriers to healthcare, and they are the very groups that will bear the brunt of this legislation. We filed this lawsuit because we cannot allow politicians who want to push abortion completely out of reach to implement yet another law that stands in the way of necessary, constitutionally protected abortion care.”

Leopard called the passing of the bill by the General Assembly a “truly stunning display of hypocrisy.”

“While they refused to fund $6 million in postnatal care for TennCare recipients, they were willing to spend millions of the state’s dollars to defend clearly unconstitutional abortion bans,” Leopard said. “These decisions are quite the opposite of pro-life. These bills are anti-life, anti-woman, anti-Black lives, anti-poor, anti-children, anti-reason.”

Leopard continued, saying Tennesseans do not want elected officials “to control our bodies in this way, especially during a time when they should be working to keep our community safe. Abortion is still legal in Tennessee today, and CHOICES is open and seeing patients.”