"Pro-Life" Lawmakers Propose Amendment Allowing the Death Penalty for Pregnant Women
Legislative hypocrisy isn't just predictable; it's dangerous
The “Human Life Protection Act” passed the Tennessee House and Senate in 2019, banning abortion in the state within a month of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. It allowed for three exceptions:
“the abortion is necessary to prevent the death of pregnant woman”
to “prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function”
“prohibits prosecution of a woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted”
An amendment to a new bill reverses those protections and throws opens the door to prosecuting women who get an abortion for any reason.
The first draft of Tennessee’s 2026 HB 570/SB 738 “directs the state capitol commission to be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the monument to unborn children through funds appropriated to the commission.”
Separation of church and state should prevent spending public taxpayer money on ideological commemoration for any religion. But a proposed “amendment” replacing the entirety of the bill’s text is drastically worse. It would allow for spending taxpayer money to imprison or even execute Tennesseans based on fundamentalist religious ideology.
As reported by The Tennessean newspaper, prosecutors could “charge women who obtain abortions — or are ‘involved in the homicide of her own unborn child’ — with fetal homicide, punishable by life imprisonment, life without parole or, in some cases, the death penalty.”
The amendment includes predictably paternalistic language: “to protect pregnant mothers from being pressured to abort their children, provisions should be repealed that may allow a person to solicit, direct, aid, or attempt to aid a mother to abort her child; now, … ” Note this does not specify any penalties against the men, for cases in which the mother wants to keep the baby but the father pressures her into an abortion or drugs her with abortifacients.
Neither of the sponsoring legislators have addressed that, most tragically, the leading cause of death for pregnant girls and women is not obstetric complications like hypertensive disorders, hemorrhage, or sepsis.
It’s homicide.
This is just another “pro-life” policy from the “pro-life” party smoke-screening “protecting” women while failing to address homicide being the leading cause of death for pregnant women; disproportionately young women under 30, Black women, and women with limited education; almost half by their intimate partners; and almost 65% with guns. Harvard researchers cite multiple studies and describe the powder keg of restricted health care access, easy gun access, and intimate partner violence that endanger pregnant girls and women in the U.S.
Where are the bills protecting pregnant women from being shot to death by the men who impregnated them?
Homicide aside, the Republican bill sponsors, Rep. Jody Barrett and Sen. Mark Pody do not address that pregnancy is an enormously complicated medical condition and process. Pregnancy can be lethal, both biologically and socially. Childbirth can kill women.
Nor are they legislating comprehensive sex education that teaches boys to use condoms every single time they have sex until they are emotionally and financially ready to be fathers. They are not recommending men get vasectomies or lobbying insurance companies to stop covering (gender-affirming) erectile dysfunction medication. They are implicitly promoting the time-immemorial double standard that has literally been killing women for all of human history: consequence-free sex and ejaculation for boys and men; danger and punishment for the girls and women they impregnate.
“States categorized as being restrictive to abortion access had a 75% higher rate of peripartum homicide,” the American College of Surgeons reported.
Preventing pregnancy is not the objective. Terrifying women into carrying pregnancies to term, regardless of the risks, regardless of their own choices or safety is.
Neither the sponsoring legislators nor the language in this bill or its amendment address these increasingly dire risks of pregnancy for American girls and women. They are not interested in protecting women. They are committed to punishing women who do not or cannot say yes to carrying every pregnancy to term.
Hypocritically absent from almost all of the pro-life morality discourse is responsibility, accountability, or consequences for the men impregnating girls and women.
Every pregnancy can cause life-threatening risks like ectopic pregnancies, complications during childbirth, medical misogynoir bigotry against Black women, and shame and stigma whether you choose to pursue an abortion or wind up becoming a single mom.
Every unsafe abortion can cause severe infections, hemorrhaging, sepsis, organ damage, permanent sterility, and death.
According to the World Health Organization, 700 pregnant women died every day in 2023 from preventable pregnancy-related causes and childbirth.
Tennessee lawmakers are not responsible for solving global health crises. But they are oath-bound to uphold the U.S. and Tennessee state constitutions. They should prioritize spending Tennesseans’ hard-earned tax money on laws and policies that demonstrably improve their lives, not endanger them.
“The lack of safeguards, hygienic conditions, and incorrect administration of medication can lead to things like post-abortion sepsis, hemorrhaging, and genital trauma—all of which can all lead to death,” Amanda Arnold wrote in 2016. “An estimated 1.2 million women in the US resorted to illegal abortions every single year before Roe v. Wade, and those abortions directly led to as many as 5,000 annual deaths, according to the NARAL Foundation. The more restrictive the abortions laws are in a given state or country, the higher the instances of unsafe abortions, which today account for about 13 percent of maternal deaths globally, according to a 2008 World Health Organization study.”
“Evidence shows that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions that take place. In fact, restrictions are more likely to drive women and girls towards unsafe procedures. In countries where abortion is most restricted, only 1 in 4 abortions are safe, compared to nearly 9 in 10 in countries where the procedure is broadly legal,” WHO reported in 2022.
Just like abstinence-only education does not prevent young people from having sex, criminalizing abortion does not prevent people from having them. It just compromises their safety when they are forced to pursue dangerous alternatives.
Legislation that reduces girls and women to vending machines dispensing babies is not pro-life, it’s pro-birth, as a Catholic nun, Sr. Joan Chittister famously distinguished in a viral post. And it is dangerously anti-women.
Religious fundamentalism isn’t pro-life; it endangers pregnant people by criminalizing healthcare.