Protestors urged lawmakers to oppose abortion restrictions considered at the state legislature Monday night
The Tennessee General Assembly on Monday night passed one anti-abortion bill while again killing another one over constitutional concerns.
Both the Senate and the House approved a law that would re-establish state abortion prohibitions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns all or part of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision granting abortion rights nationwide. The high court could make such a reversal in response to a test case like the one proposed by others at the legislature this session, but the so-called heartbeat ban again failed in the Senate on Monday night.
The latter bill was an attempt to ban abortions once a fetus’s heartbeat is detected. Though it passed in the House earlier this year, it failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee amid concerns that a legal challenge of the legislation could lead to a defeat in court, as it has in other states that have passed similar legislation. Its sponsor, Sen. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), sought to use a procedural move to bring the bill straight to the Senate floor, but the Republican-majority body agreed with the committee decision to send it to summer study.
“The sponsor is well-intentioned, but I believe he’s taking the wrong approach at the wrong time,” said Sen. Mike Bell (R-Riceville).
Sen. Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield), a co-sponsor of the heartbeat bill, said he supported sending the bill to summer study in order to make it as strong as possible so that it might stand a better chance of resulting in a Supreme Court affirmation years down the road.
The Roe v. Wade trigger bill passed the Senate 26-5 and the House 69-24 with protestors looking on in both chambers. The trigger bill originally failed in a House committee, in what some observers speculated was retribution for the Senate’s skepticism over the heartbeat bill, but Republicans were successful in bringing the Roe bill back to the floor.
Democrats in the Senate questioned whether it was constitutional to pass legislation that would hamstring future legislatures by passing a bill that would only go into effect upon a future action, but Sen. Dolores Gresham (R-Somerville) said the bill would simply re-active pre-Roe law already on the books in Tennessee. Others in opposition questioned the legislation on pro-choice grounds.
“A ban on abortion doesn’t stop abortions, it stops safe abortions,” Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) said.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee has said he supports any legislation that would reduce the number of abortions in the state.
