Since her start as a legislator, state Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) has been on a roll with passing legislation related to doulas.
One of the first bills Lamar filed this session, SB44, seeks again to get doula services covered by TennCare. These professionals provide nonclinical emotional, physical and informational support while serving as advocates for the pregnant person. While much of her official slate for the 2025 legislative session — which gaveled in this week — has yet to be filed as of press time, Lamar plans to focus on a broad goal, she tells the Scene: elevating the quality of life for families.
She’s yet to see results from the $1 million Gov. Bill Lee included in the 2023-24 budget to create a pilot program to try out TennCare doula payment, and she explains that the 2024-created Maternal Health Equity Advisory Committee is still in the works. In 2026, she’ll see results from the Doula Services Advisory Committee, which is tasked with evaluating reimbursement and training in the profession. That law creating the committee passed in 2023, and was amended last year to add more community-based members.
Sen. London Lamar says her legislation is entwined with abortion ban
While tangible results have yet to come to fruition, Lamar says she’s seen progress, and notices that more people are open to the idea of doulas. The most recent state maternal mortality report found that Black women, unmarried women, poor women, women with less education and women living in urban areas died at higher rates during their pregnancies and in the year following. In addition, mortality rates for women on TennCare were nearly three times higher than those on private insurance. Lamar asserts that doulas are one way to address that. She’s had her own personal experience losing a child in 2019, and has seen the deaths of both mothers and babies in her family.
Additionally, Tennessee ranked 49th in the country on policies that benefit families and children, from conception to age 3, according to a recent report.
“I’m not just advocating for mom and babies alone,” Lamar says. “I’m actually the most pro-life legislator, because I actually think about the quality of life for our children after birth and for the mothers.”
Lamar’s mission is especially important in Tennessee, she says, because more babies will be born due to the state’s abortion ban.
“I know that because I’m a Democrat in Tennessee, I’m never gonna be able to pass a bill as long as [the Republican supermajority is] in power to reinstate abortion or give women their rights back,” Lamar says. “But what I can work on is for the women who are forced to go through this process, I want to at least make sure they’re going to make it out alive.”
“Most times, people have to choose abortion because of health circumstances, or the fact that they literally can’t afford it, and that is not their own fault,” Lamar says. “That’s the fault of society, that’s the fault of the General Assembly for allowing businesses to misuse workers and not pay them fair wages. That’s a reflection on our minimum wage, a reflection on how we have not done a good job, on price gouging, inflation and all these other issues that impact people’s quality of life.”
Looking at scarcity, cost burden and workforce issues — and how the state will try to dig out of it
Lamar, Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) and Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) are part of a small cohort of women who are of child-bearing age in the legislature. Because of this, their legislation often intersects. This year, Oliver and Behn have proposed legislation that would make preschool free for every 4-year-old in Tennessee. Oliver also introduced legislation related to child care last year, which did not pass, while a bill that Lamar filed to ensure TennCare coverage for children met its demise. Oliver and Behn have also filed a bill (SB2/HB2) that would end the grocery tax.
“Every child deserves access to a great education, and universal pre-K is the best way to ensure that opportunity begins at the earliest stages of learning,” says Sen. Oliver, a working mother of three, in a release. “This isn’t just an investment in our kids; it’s an economic lifeline for working families. Universal pre-K reduces child care costs, boosts family incomes, and strengthens Tennessee’s workforce. It’s time to deliver real relief to families who are stretched too thin.”
Lamar tells the Scene that Republicans have done a better job communicating their message than Democrats.
“I’m going to be encouraging all our Democrats to get back to a centralized message, a unified message, of improving the quality of life of working-class people in Tennessee, so that all of our outcomes can be better,” she says. “We are the party that’s actually doing that, and also exposing many of the hypocrisies of the majority party.”
