Watching the fallout from Tennessee’s abortion ban
I was standing at the south end of the Walnut Street Bridge last week when a young man walked up to me and asked, “Can we talk?”
I recognized him from the rallies. “Sure,” I said.
He said he’d been misled and misinformed. He’d changed his position. He apologized.
“It’s OK,” I said. “You were doing what you believed was right.”
As Hamilton County’s sole Democratic challenger for State House in 2022, I became one of the few local faces of Tennessee’s pro-choice majority when Roe was overturned and our abortion ban went into effect. Over the next couple of years, I was invited to speak at several women’s rallies.
Most people in Tennessee’s anti-choice minority express their position by voting or volunteering. A tiny few show up at women’s rallies and other public places, as this young man did, to shout outrageous things and wave gruesome signs. One person burned Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood clinic to the ground.
America’s pro-life movement was established in 1979 for nakedly political reasons. Nearly fifty years of virulent propaganda hasn’t just won elections. It’s also radicalized part of the electorate.
Evangelical Christians once held moderate views on abortion. Now I’m talking to voters who believe it’s immoral under any circumstances. That’s a radical view. Unfortunately, all Tennesseans are living in their world.
In the land of the free, no state should force women and girls to risk dying in childbirth.
And it’s a real risk. Tennessee has the sixth-highest maternal mortality rate in the US, just after Georgia. The US has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country, and it’s the only developed country whose maternal mortality rate is rising.
There’s already been an abortion-ban death in Georgia. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened in Tennessee. Nine women are currently suing the state because of injuries caused by the ban.
My opponent hasn’t expressed concern about the ban or its collateral damage. His stated position, “I believe in defending the defenseless human being even if he or she is inside of another human being,” gives off big women-are-vessels energy.
That’s what his website said until fairly recently. Now it’s been scrubbed—not just that sentence, but the whole pro-life plank that was central to his political identity. He replaced it with a plank about immigration.
Has he changed his stance on our abortion ban? I doubt it. There’s strong political pressure on Tennessee’s Republican legislators to toe that line.
I guess he just realized it isn’t a winning position.
This was confusing to this old lady. I had to read it all to find out your position on abortion. It turns out, you are sensible. The far right has co-opted the term “Pro-life”, a perfectly good term, and made it mean abortion bans.
Thanks for that comment, and I’m sorry for the confusion! Your term, “co-opted,” is a really good way of putting what’s happened here. Pro-life policies would always protect the lives of pregnant women and girls, make it easier for them to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies (the most reliable birth control is expensive if you don’t have insurance), and make it economically easier to have and raise an unplanned child. I heard an interview a few weeks ago with someone from our local United Way. She said Tennessee is 49th for the services it provides to struggling families with young children, and 40 percent of Tennessee families with young children either don’t know where their next meal is coming from or rely on the food bank or similar charities to feed their kids. We are not a “pro-life” state.
I would love to have a yard sign if you are ever back in Hidden Harbor.
6625 Schooner Bay Lane
Hi Brad! Happy to oblige. I’ve put you on our yard sign list. A volunteer will bring you one!
Pro-life is not a word synonymous with what these right wing radicals truly believe. Maternal deaths are occurring all over the country, one which is supposed to be the highest of developed countries. Yet, the deaths will continue if citizens keep voting for those accepting payoffs from the Christian Evangelicals.
Those who believe in reproductive rights are pro-life, not those who believe women are simply vessels to birth babies, otherwise keeping a low profile and running a household while vacuuming in high heels.
I’m placing my vote for Allison Gorman, a strong woman who believes in democracy and the need for responsible legislation where equality and life are as highly regarded as those who oppose it vehemently.
Thanks so much, Alice. Turning a nuanced personal and medical issue into a culture war has been beneficial to Republican politicians but devastating for women and girls in red states. Unfortunately the traumas they’re enduring are happening behind closed doors and HIPAA regulations. The less powerful the traumatized woman or girl, the less likely it is that we’ll ever hear her story. That makes it far too easy for “pro-life” legislators to protect their political power rather than their constituents. We have to vote them out.