Gino Bulso Files First Piece of 2027 State Legislation on Abortion Pills

State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) revived a bill on Wednesday that aims to allow for civil liability lawsuits related to the use of abortion pills in Tennessee.

A previous version of the bill died in the state Senate in April as part of the 114th General Assembly. This new bill, House Bill 1, is the first piece of legislation filed ahead of the General Assembly’s return to the Capitol in January.

The bill, which is sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald), “creates a statutory damage award of $1,000,000 to a patient or other wrongful death beneficiary if the patient or other wrongful death beneficiary proves by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant sent an abortion-inducing drug into this state to the patient via courier, delivery, or mail service and the drug caused the death of an unborn child.”

Legislation Seeks to Further Crack Down on Mailed Abortion Pills

Though pregnant people are protected from litigation, Bulso’s bill could still open a path to a federal lawsuit

This means that a spouse, parent or even a patient who had an abortion through the use of abortion medication, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, could file a civil lawsuit based on the abortion of a fetus or injury or death of a patient who had the abortion.

As previously reported by the Scene, the bill follows the 2022 “Tennessee Abortion-Inducing Drug Risk Protocol Act,” which made it a class-E felony to mail or deliver abortion-inducing drugs into the state.

Bulso tells Scene sister publication the Williamson Scene that he expects the bill to have enough votes to pass, noting that the previous version of the bill was held on the Senate desk on the last day of session after going through conference committees.

“I think it'll go very quickly and be one of the first bills that is actually passed out of the General Assembly and signed by Gov.-[Elect Marsha] Blackburn,” Bulso says.

This article was first published by our sister publication, the Williamson Scene.