Tennessee Lookout – Page 3

More than 700 Tennessee doctors, nurses and other medical professionals are calling on the state’s GOP-super majority Legislature to revisit an abortion ban that criminalizes the procedure with no exceptions and subjects doctors who perform it to prosecution, fines and jail time.

In an open letter to the legislature, published in a full page ad in The Tennessean on Sunday, the healthcare professionals are asking the General Assembly to “reconsider the ‘trigger law.’”

“Tennesseans should have the right to make personal health care decisions with the assistance of their doctors and healthcare team – without the intrusion of politicians,” the letter says.

“This law puts the government in charge of deciding which healthcare options are available to patients, setting a dangerous precedent that violates the sacred physician-patient relationship.”

“And because it includes zero exceptions – not for rape, incest, fetal anomaly, or even to protect the mother’s life – it forces health care providers to balance appropriate medical care with the risk of criminal prosecution.”

Tennessee’s trigger law, formally named the “Human Life Protection Act,” took effect Aug. 25, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion rights case, Roe v Wade and left to individual states the right to set abortion rules.

In Tennessee, the law makes performing an abortion a Class C felony, punishable for up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for anyone who performs one. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Instead of containing an exception to the law for abortions necessary to spare the life of, or grave harm to, a pregnant patient, the law says doctors may use those circumstances as an affirmative defense in a criminal trial.

All Tennessee abortion clinics have ceased offering the procedure; women seeking abortions must travel out of state. And doctors say they fear they will be prosecuted for providing life-saving abortions.

The signers of the paid ad are individuals, not the hospitals that employ them. Hospitals have declined to answer reporters’ questions about how they will comply with the law and whether they are permitting any life-saving abortions to be performed at their facilities.

“We are doing the heavy lifting ourselves—and that means funding the effort ourselves, as well,” said Dr. Amy Gordon Bono, a Nashville physician.

The letter was initiated by Dr. Nikki Zite, a Knoxville OB-GYN, Dr. Heather Maune, a Nashville OB-GYN, and Dr. Jessica Rosen, a Nashville emergency medicine physician, a news release said.

“This letter quickly gained support from so many colleagues because healthcare workers don’t want a ban without exceptions,” Dr. Zite said. “Medical professionals understand that there are situations, often heartbreaking, when ending a pregnancy is necessary. People don’t want physicians delaying care because they fear being criminalized.”

Organizers are working to next run the ad in the Tennessean online, Dr. Bono said.

The letter does not include specific recommendations for whether the law should be amended or overturned, but notes the law, as it is written now, could criminalize routine and urgent medical procedures, including tubal pregnancies, serious infections or cancers during pregnancy and miscarriage care.

Full text of the letter:

As medical professionals from across Tennessee, we call on our legislature to reconsider the “trigger law,” which bans abortion without exception and criminalizes physicians for providing lifesaving care.

This law makes ending any pregnancy a felony offense, even when the pregnancy cannot survive to viability and threatens the life of the mother. This impacts women experiencing miscarriages, tubal pregnancies, or even serious infections or cancers during pregnancy.

Tennesseans should have the right to make personal health care decisions with the assistance of their doctors and healthcare team – without the intrusion of politicians. This law puts the government in charge of deciding which healthcare options are available to patients, setting a dangerous precedent that violates the sacred physician-patient relationship. And because it includes zero exceptions – not for rape, incest, fetal anomaly, or even to protect the mother’s life – it forces health care providers to balance appropriate medical care with the risk of criminal prosecution.

We stand united in support of Tennesseans to make their own medical decisions including abortion care, and we affirm the position of all relevant national societies, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association in their opposition of this dangerous legislation.

This story originally published in Tennessee Lookout, part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.

No few local political observers were puzzled in the aftermath of November’s statewide elections by published reports that former state Representative John DeBerry had left his campaign financial account of roughly $200,000 untouched, spending none of it in his losing bid as an independent to newly elected Democratic successor Torrey Harris.

John DeBerry

Certainly that conclusion seemed somewhat sensible in the wake of DeBerry’s four-to-one loss to Harris, but the fact was that DeBerry had not gone unspoken for. Especially in the latter stages of his race, a plethora of signs boosting his re-election had appeared at strategic locations of the sprawling District 90.

It was suggested that DeBerry, whose GOP-like positions had caused him to be banished by the state Democratic Party from its ballot, had been the beneficiary of contributors from a conservative Political Action Committee on his behalf. To some degree he had, but it now develops, according to the Tennessee Lookout, that DeBerry did in fact spend from his own resources, to the tune of some $90,000, and that he would shortly be amending his previous financial disclosure report to the state Election Registry.

Going forward, the former legislator is likely to have few financial worries. As previously reported, he has been hired by Republican Governor Bill Lee as an advisor, at an annual salary of $165,000. How he’ll earn that is a little uncertain. DeBerry had a certain fame in the General Assembly for his oratorical prowess, which he used in recent years on anti-abortion and pro-voucher subjects, among others. How that penchant translates into his new advisory role remains to be seen.

• The aforementioned Lookout, which has a discernible progressive tilt, is renting space these days in the press room of the Cordell Hull building, which also houses legislators’ offices and meeting rooms, and will be covering the forthcoming legislative session from there.

Because of its arguable identity as an advocacy journal, there had been a modicum of controversy among the existing denizens of the press room, all serving established and ostensibly politically neutral periodicals, as to whether the Lookout should have a space there.

One of those considering the point rhetorically was Sam Stockard, a longtime journalist for various periodicals, most recently the Daily Memphian, for whom he rendered formidable service.

Somewhat to the astonishment of Stockard’s peers, the DM recently discontinued his role as their Capitol Hill correspondent. With the consent of his colleagues, Stockard will soldier on in Cordell Hull as the official lookout for the aforementioned Lookout.

• Even amid expectations of the imminent arrival of a COVID vaccine, the current spike of cases has raised anxiety in Shelby County. The auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building has suggested a ghost town for most of the pandemic in 2020. But it was filled to the maximum and beyond during a recent meeting at which county health department director Alisa Haushalter laid down new directives for dealing with the spike, which is currently setting new records for cases and deaths.

The new guidelines, which tightened mandates on mask-wearing, limited serving capacities, and established 10 p.m. closing times for restaurants, seemed moderate enough, at least by harsher standards applied elsewhere in the nation. But nearly 30 citizens came to the well to protest them, in sentiments ranging from sensible to troubled to outlandish.

One complainant advised the assembled commissioners and other county officials, “Listen to the mandate of the people in the referendum provided to you daily on social media.” Another inveighed against the restrictions as specimens of “communism.” And there were numerous spurious statistics spouted, such as a claim that there had been only some 13,000 COVID deaths nationally, and only 37 in Shelby County, with the rest actually being misreported cases of diabetes, cancer, and gunshot wounds.

Most of the commentary from the audience, however, concerned the legitimate anguish, economic and otherwise, of gym proprietors and restaurant owners who felt their livelihoods to be in serious jeopardy. Commission chairman Eddie Jones patiently and sympathetically moderated the public-discussion period.