Tennessee Bill Would Allow Women Who Have Abortions To Be Charged With Homicide

Legislation offered up in the Tennessee statehouse would add women who have abortions to the list of individuals eligible for murder charges. Amendments to House Bill 570, introduced by Representative Jody Barrett, and Senate Bill 738, Senator Mark Pody, both Republicans, aims to mandate that mothers of terminated “preborn” children face the same criminal and civil charges as someone who kills a born person. “This bill would completely abolish abortion in Tennessee,” Mr. Barrett said on his podcast, The Woodshed.Mr. Barrett said the law closes a gap that allows thousands of abortions to continue either by doctors ignoring the law or by women who receive the morning-after bill, mifepristone, in the mail. “Unborn children do have the same right to life and equal protection under the constitution. They should be constitutionally protected,” Mr. Barrett said, urging Republicans holding a supermajority in the Tennessee legislature to “help create the best bill we can and get that across the finish line.” The short piece of legislation effectively amends two existing criminal codes on the books regarding fetal homicide and criminal homicide by allowing prosecutors to seek penalties against individuals who cause deaths during “gestation in utero” the same as they would for “a person who had been born alive.”The law does not apply to the “unintentional” death of an unborn child resulting from life-saving procedures on a pregnant mother or spontaneous miscarriage. It also does not apply to women who had abortions prior to the law going into effect, which if passed, would be July 28, 2026.Opponents call the legislation among the most anti-woman legislation ever written in America. “If you needed more proof these ghouls aren’t ‘pro life’… here it is. They will kill you before they will give you bodily autonomy,” wrote disability advocate The Disabled Ginger. “So pro-life, they’re pro-death,” said political activist Jamie Bonkiewicz.The Christian-based nonprofit, Foundation to Abolish Abortion, says the legislation is an equalizer because it “would simply make murdering anyone illegal for everyone.”“House Bill 570 and Senate Bill 738 apply the existing homicide and assault laws from the moment of fertilization. As with all other criminal cases, the prosecutors, juries, judges, and other components of the Tennessee justice system would be responsible for charges, penalties, and sentencing on a case-by-case basis,” the organization wrote on X after the article appeared in The Tennessean.Tennessee already has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the nation. In 2022, the state enacted the Human Life Protection Act, which makes performing an abortion a felony. The law prohibits all abortions from time of conception without exception, except in limited medical cases where a woman is experiencing an ectopic or molar pregnancy, neither of which is viable.Physicians can face up to 15 years in prison and $10,000 in fines, and must provide an affirmative defense, meaning they have to prove that an abortion was medically necessary. The legislation is progressing slowly in the Senate, though it only has two co-sponsors. It has not yet had a hearing in the House. An underdog representative running in the Republican gubernatorial primary is co-sponsoring the House legislation. Representative Monty Fritts says the bill, along with additional legislation he is introducing to prevent “assault on the sanctity of life,” will “better align civil penalties with the laws of nature and nature’s God.” He listed human trafficking, rape, performing transition surgeries or treatment, abortion, and intentionally discarding fertilized embryo derived from IVF procedures as violations of natural law.

Tennessee Bill Would Allow Women Who Have Abortions To Be Charged With Homicide

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