It was déjà vu at the Justice A.A. Birch Building Friday. Medical providers and patients gathered to speak out against Tennessee’s near-total abortion ban on the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in the decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In August, many of the same people gathered in the same place the day Tennessee’s abortion trigger ban went into effect.
Physician and advocate Amy Gordon Bono and Franklin OB-GYN Dr. Laura Andreson took the mic again — mayoral candidate Heidi Campbell was also in attendance. Bono was active at this year’s trying legislative session, advocating for a bill to allow doctors to use good-faith medical judgment in abortion decisions. That push was quashed by anti-abortion group Tennessee Right to Life, and ended in what she and other physicians consider a too-slim exception: allowing “reasonable medical judgment” and abortions in cases of ectopic and molar pregnancies.
“We practice with targets on our back, wondering what aggressive prosecutor will disagree with our decision using reasonable medical judgment,” Bono said. “The closer my pregnant patient is to death, the less likely I am to be charged with a class-C felony. We are still in between a rock and a hard place, balancing malpractice risk and criminal consequences.”
Physicians on Friday expressed fear of criminal proceedings for doing their jobs. That fear remains one year after the fall of Roe, as there is no case law for the abortion ban in Tennessee. This time, there was less speculation and more trauma. Patients and physicians had lived through Tennessee’s abortion ban long enough to have harrowing stories to tell.
In January, during the second trimester of her pregnancy with her second child, Kathryn Archer learned of severe abnormalities in her unborn daughter. The fetus had extensive brain developmental issues, spina bifida and her bladder outside the body, among other complications. That meant if the child were to make it to term, her life would have been a string of major surgeries with little chance of survival.
“Once we knew her death was a certain outcome, I wanted her to die in my womb, a place of comfort and peace to her, rather than continue to experience the pain that was inevitable if I continued to carry her,” Archer said. In all, Archer’s cost of travel accommodations out of state, the procedure and child care for their eldest child totaled at least $10,000, she said.
“The inability for doctors to help us with continuation of care put us in a lonely and desolate place,” Archer said. “Their support to us was truly amazing and full of compassion, but it had its limitations due to a law that lacks nuance and understanding of what pregnant people must endure.”
Local OB-GYN Heather Maune shared another anonymous patient’s story, in which the patient with a uterine abnormality and a high-risk pregnancy ordered abortion pills from Plan C and performed a self-managed abortion at home. That patient feared she was breaking the law, and risking her safety when undergoing the abortion at home and without physician input. (Local organization Abortion Care Tennessee offers self-managed abortion training as well as a fund for out-of-state abortions.)
Emergency physician Dr. Katrina Green shared a story about a pregnancy that was the product of rape. The closest clinic for this person to receive an abortion was four hours away. Seventy-five percent of Tennesseans believe abortions should be legal in cases of rape or incest, according to a Vanderbilt poll — but a bill that would provide such exceptions failed in the legislature this year.
“When a medical procedure that has a life-saving therapeutic indication becomes criminal, we are on a very slippery slope in medicine,” Bono said. “When politicians are criminalizing doctors, you better believe patients aren’t far behind. When abortion care is under attack, access to pregnancy prevention and contraceptives are certainly open to attack. As long as our abortion laws remain in the criminal code in Tennessee, we will be here every year.”
