TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Feb 15, 2023

A state House subcommittee yesterday approved a narrow exception to the Tennessee Human Life Protection Act, which took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs case. The amended bill, HB883, would clarify that termination of a pregnancy for the following reasons would not constitute a criminal abortion: medical emergencies, disposal of unimplanted fertilized eggs, removal of ectopic or molar pregnancies, medically futile pregnancies or lethal fetal anomalies. The state currently has no explicit exception in its abortion ban. Instead, the law allows doctors to argue that an abortion was medically necessary. The bill approved by the subcommittee would remove this “affirmative defense” language, WJHL reports.