Republicans in Tennessee have proposed a bill that would allow women who have had an abortion to be sentenced to death.
House Bill 570 allows for the death penalty to be imposed on women who have abortions, as well as charging women “involved in the homicide of her own unborn child” with homicide.
It was co-sponsored by state Rep. Jody Barrett and Senator Mark Pody, who sponsored the bill, though it is not yet on the calendar for consideration, according to The Tennessean.
The legislation would allow prosecutors to charge women who obtain abortions with fetal homicide. This crime is punishable by life imprisonment, life without parole, and in some cases, the death penalty.
Tennessee has some of the strictest abortion laws in the U.S. since its “trigger ban” took place in 2022. The Human Life Protection Act prevents all abortions from fertilization and there are no exceptions for rape or incest.
In addition, performing an abortion is a Class C felony and can result in fines and up to 15 years in prison for doctors who perform them.
The Tennessean reports that HB0570 specifically removes further legal protections from women living in the state and classifies harm done to an unborn child the same as harm done to a living person, or someone who is "born alive."
Exceptions include the cases of “spontaneous miscarriage” or “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, the outlet reports. Retroactive prosecutions of women accused of such actions before July 1 – when the bill would hypothetically go into effect – would not be allowed.
The Independent has reached out to Barrett and Pody’s offices for comment.
Fellow Republican congressman Monty Fritts, who co-sponsored the bill and is running for Tennessee governor, has constantly backed the idea that women who receive abortions should face the death penalty.
“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 told the Tennessee Holler, adding that abortion should be a “capital crime.”
“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,” he told the outlet.
Elsewhere, Clint Pressley, president of the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention, also endorsed the bill last week, writing on social media that it would “protect every preborn child in Tennessee from abortion by providing preborn children with equal protection of the laws.
“By protecting the lives of preborn children with the same laws that protect people who are born, we are simply loving our neighbors in the womb as ourselves,” he said, adding that Tennessee “now has the opportunity to set an example of how states can protect the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.”
Barrett and Pody's bill has also been endorsed by the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, a nonprofit whose mission is to “exalt and vindicate the image of God by promoting sound public policy that provides all preborn human beings equal protection of the laws."
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