"Pro-life" Tennessee GOP pushes amendment to murder women who have abortions

A shocking amendment to a piece of legislation would have let prosecutors charge women and doctors with capital murder

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A proposed amendment to an otherwise symbolic piece of legislation would have allowed Tennessee officials to execute women who have abortions along with any doctors who dared to help them.

While the amendment now appears to be dead, it was all part of a deeply ironic effort to show just how “pro-life” Republicans are.

You wouldn’t know any of this from reading HB 570 and its companion bill SB 738, since neither bill seemed all that controversial.

In 2018, lawmakers passed a bill to install a “memorial for unborn children” outside the State Capitol. It was a ridiculous gesture in a state that ranks near the bottom when it comes to health care and at the very bottom when it comes to maternal death. They love to pretend to care about the unborn, but they don’t give a shit about those who are living. In any case, the monument will finally be unveiled this summer after lawmakers figured out how to pay for it. HB 570/SB 738 simply require the State Capitol Commission to take care of the monument once it’s up.

But a proposed amendment to that bill would have replaced the text with a requirement to punish anyone involved with an abortion, up to and including the death penalty. It was proposed by Rep. Jody Barrett.

Jody Barrett (screenshot via YouTube)

The amendment itself was cloaked in legalese, but the Tennessean explained the bottom line:

[The amendment] would allow prosecutors to charge women who obtain abortions with fetal homicide, punishable by life imprisonment, life without parole, or in some cases, the death penalty.

…

The bill specifically removes legal protections for pregnant women currently in statute, and classifies harm done to an unborn child as equal to assault on a person "born alive."

The amendment offered a few exemptions to state-sanctioned murder:

It would not apply to “a spontaneous miscarriage,” or to “unintentional death of an unborn child” after “undertaking life-saving procedures” to save the life of the mother and “to save the life of the unborn child.” No other exceptions are specified in the amendment text.

Retroactive prosecutions of women who were “involved in the assault of her unborn child” or “involved in the homicide of her own unborn child” before the bill goes into effect would not be allowed.

Clint Pressley, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was thrilled by the opportunity to murder women who have abortions:

Apparently, it’s “pro-life” to execute women who, for reasons that Pressley will never have to think about, choose to end a pregnancy on their own terms. There’s no room for that kind of nuance in his worldview. This amendment is just about “loving our neighbors in the womb,” which is always easy to do because the unborn have no opinions or needs. If they dare exercise autonomy over themselves, though, then they might need to be murdered.

There was a time when anti-abortion zealots avoided going after women who have abortions because they knew it was a bad look. They refused to acknowledge there are sensible reasons for women to have abortions, choosing instead to spread the pernicious myth that every abortion is merely a form of birth control for women who couldn’t bother with birth control. But now that they control the government and the courts, all bets are off.

Barrett’s only defense of his bill was that executing women was very unlikely even if his amendment were adopted:

"A simple examination of the death penalty in Tennessee would show that that's just not realistic. Now, do I have to admit that the death penalty is a possibility? Sure. But since the death penalty was reinstated in Tennessee in 1977, there's been less than 200 people sentenced to death, and only 16 have actually been executed. None of them women," Barrett said.

That’s a bizarre way of saying he wants to expand the death penalty so more women are eligible to be murdered.

The extremist group “Foundation to Abolish Abortion” celebrated the introduction of the amendment:

Under this legislation, murdering anyone would be made illegal for everyone, ensuring that all humans made in the image of God are equally protected in accordance with the Tennessee Constitution, the United States Constitution, and the Law of God.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood slammed the amendment for its abject cruelty:

This bill is an egregious affront to the bodily autonomy, health, and rights of pregnant people, and does nothing to address the maternal and infant mortality crises Tennessee is currently facing. It is clear this bill is about control, because if legislators truly upheld the value of sanctity of life, they would be proposing legislation to ensure that pregnant people and babies can access the healthcare they need, when they need it.

This amendment also had the support of a Republican candidate for governor:

Rep. Monty Fritts, R-Kingston, who has signed on to the bill as co-sponsor, and is running for governor, has repeatedly expressed support for imposing the death penalty on women who receive abortions.

“Murder is murder. I know that’s hard for people to hear, and I don’t mean to be hard with it, I promise,” Fritts recently told the Tennessee Holler, later likening abortion-inducing pills to “a cyanide capsule.”

Fritts said he feels abortion should be considered a “capital crime because we have failed to identify that tiny little, jelly-bean-sized baby as a human being. If we kill a human being, we have to say it is murder.”

Ever since the proposed amendment began drawing attention, supporters were ill-equipped to defend it. Mostly because it’s indefensible. But now, it appears the amendment—and the bills themselves—are dead.

State Sen. Mark Pody, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, said he would withdraw the entire thing because, with the amendment attached, there was no way it was going to pass:

Pody, a Lebanon Republican, said he can’t run the measure because of the amendment tacked onto it by state Rep. Jody Barrett, a Dickson Republican, which would penalize women who have abortions, including those who go out of state for treatment of dangerous pregnancies.

“I appreciate that he is very, very passionate about this issue,” Pody said Tuesday. “But it’s very easy to see I don’t have the votes in the Senate, so there’s no sense in running it.”

Notice that Pody didn’t say he was withdrawing his bill because the amendment was barbaric and senseless. He’s fully on board with murdering women who have abortions. He just doesn’t have enough votes to make it happen, and he doesn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of filing a bill that gets shot down by a Republican-controlled legislature.

Meanwhile, Barrett didn’t see any problem with his suggestion and lashed out against anyone who said he was supporting murder:

Barrett said Tuesday he is not trying to have women sentenced to death, even though his bill would treat the unborn the same as the born, calling that the “equal protection” portion of the bill.

“It’s not singling out women. It’s saying that anybody that kills a child in the womb would be subject to criminal penalty,” Barrett said.

That’s… the same thing. It singles out women and could lead to a death sentence.

All of this is happening in a state that already prosecutes doctors who assist with abortions; they face up to 15 years in prison. It’s also a felony to help someone travel to another state to have the procedure done just as it’s a crime for companies to fulfill orders for abortion pills via mail.

And yet abortions happen anyway. This legislation wouldn’t do a damn thing to prevent abortions. It’s just going to drive the practice further underground, leading to more unsafe abortions. These right-wing extremists would rather see women suffer than allow them to control their own bodies. It doesn’t matter to them if the woman isn’t ready to have a baby or if she’s pregnant due to sexual assault or incest. There’s no room for that kind of compassion or thoughtfulness in their religion or politics.

Ultimately, all we learned from the introduction and withdrawal of this motion is that Tennessee Republicans aren’t satisfied with banning abortion. They want to terrorize women into submission. The fact that this amendment was treated as a legitimate policy proposal, rather than immediately condemned as an abuse of power, shows us just how far extremists have come in making their views mainstream.

If Republicans truly cared about life, they would be investing in prenatal care, expanding Medicaid, funding rural hospitals, and ensuring safe pregnancies. But they never push for those changes. Now they’re just proposing death sentences against women who dare to not go through with a pregnancy.

You can’t claim to value life when the death penalty remains in your toolbox.

And when your plan fails because even Republican politicians refuse to get on board with it, it should be proof of how radical this plan always was.

Incidentally. when one leader of the anti-abortion movement pointed out the hypocrisy of using the death penalty to advance a “pro-life” agenda, she was met with these words from a Christian Nationalist pastor:

They’re not getting rid of the anti-woman criticism anytime soon.

Smarter politicians would adjust their strategies after backlash like this. But we’re talking about Tennessee Republicans here. They’re not backing down from this. The only hope is that this kind of Christian Sharia Law will backfire. Most Americans—even many who personally oppose abortion—ought to recognize that murdering women for having abortions is barbaric. The more that Republicans pursue these extreme agendas, the more they risk alienating their own base, including suburban women, younger voters, and anyone who understands that medical decisions shouldn’t carry the risk of state-sponsored execution.

None of this will help women, or make pregnancies safer, or reduce maternal mortality, or improve health care access. All this kind of rhetoric does is create fear and make desperate situations even more dangerous. Women with resources will still find ways to get care, just as they’ve always done. Just ask pastors’ wives and daughters. And women without resources will continue suffering the consequences imposed upon them by conservative lawmakers.

Tennessee Republicans—at least some of them—would rather execute women than trust them. And their colleagues, even if they’re not on board with this bill, support what they’re doing because you won’t hear them denouncing this sort of legislation as thoughtless.

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