Article By Ryan Foley
A new measure proposed in Tennessee seeks to impose criminal penalties on women who terminate their unborn child, re-sparking a heated debate within the pro-life movement about whether women who undergo abortions should be held criminally liable.
Last month, the Foundation to Abolish Abortion shared the text of an amendment to pending legislation in Tennessee, House Bill 570 and Senate Bill 738, that would impose criminal penalties on women who have abortions. Current criminal penalties apply only to physicians who perform abortions.
The text of the amendment, introduced by Republican state Rep. Jody Barrett, states that “all preborn children should be protected with the same criminal and civil laws protecting the lives of born persons by repealing provisions that permit prenatal homicide and assault.”
The amendment revises Tennessee law governing criminal offenses against people with a fetus as a victim to state “Enforcement pursuant to this section is subject to the same presumptions, defenses, justifications, laws of parties, immunities, and clemencies as would apply to the assault of a person who had been born alive.”
Current Tennessee law states that laws protecting fetuses do not “apply to any act or omission by a pregnant woman with respect to an embryo or fetus with which she is pregnant, or to any lawful medical or surgical procedure to which a pregnant woman consents, performed by a health care professional who is licensed to perform such procedure.”
Democratic critics of the proposal contend that the language opens the door for women to be eligible for capital punishment.
The measure clarifies that “A woman involved in the assault of her unborn child before the effective date of this act must not be prosecuted under this section,” adding “This section is prospective only and does not apply to any act committed prior to the effective date of this act.”
In an interview with The Christian Post, Tennessee State Sen. Mark Pody, a Republican, clarified that the amendment “does not appear to have the votes going through the Senate,” calling the bill’s future into question.
Pody predicted that “what we’ll end up doing is we’re just going to see what would be a reasonable thing that everybody would be comfortable with moving forward.” Republicans currently hold an overwhelming 27-6 majority in the Tennessee State Senate.
Pody introduced the original Senate Bill 738, which dealt with a completely different topic: the “upkeep and maintenance” of a monument to unborn children. Pody elaborated on why the bill ended up going in a different direction: “The monument’s already there. We just wanted to make sure it was going to be kept up. … And that was a couple years ago, and it looks like that’s all been handled at this point. So that just turned this into a bill that we didn’t need anymore. So it was just kind of sitting on the shelf and the House picked it up with this amendment.”
Pody stressed that the amendment has to make it through the Tennessee House of Representatives, which has a 75-24 Republican majority, before it can get to the Tennessee Senate and did not comment on its prospects in the lower chamber nor what an amended version of the legislation might look like.
Pro-life activists and Christian leaders who have weighed in on the new proposal and others like it have offered mixed reactions, with some seeing it as a necessary step to protecting all unborn life and others characterizing it as counterproductive to the pro-life movement.
In a statement posted to X last week, Southern Baptist Convention President Clint Pressley, the senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, came out in support of the amendments, drawing praise from those in the abortion abolitionist movement.
“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,” Pressley wrote.
“Tennessee now has the opportunity to set an example of how states can protect the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death,” Pressley added. “I am urging the Tennessee legislature to move these bills forward this legislative session. It’s both pro-life and consistent!”
In an interview with The Christian Post, President Penny Young Nance of the social conservative activist organization Concerned Women for America described the legislation as “wrongheaded,” “bad strategy” and “not right thinking.”
“It changes … our ability to bring people to our side and harms the movement overall,” Nance told CP “We want to end abortion, this is not the way to do it.”
Nance characterized efforts to subject women who have abortions to criminal charges as contrary to biblical teachings. She pointed to the command laid out in Matthew 10:16 to be “as wise as serpents and soft as doves.”
“This strategy is as wise as doves and soft as serpents. It’s the exact opposite. And then I would add to that Micah 6:8, the Bible tells us to ‘do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with our God.’ This may be just, maybe, maybe, but it certainly isn’t the other two. There’s no mercy and there’s no humility in that effort.”
The Christian Post reached out to Barrett’s office seeking a comment for the story. A response was not received by press time. Barrett recently told WTVF that he believes “murder should be murder, whether it’s a person in being or a person in utero.”
“I think that’s a talking point saying that you’re targeting mothers,” Barrett said. “We’re not targeting mothers. We’re targeting unborn children and trying to protect them and give them the protection under the law for you and me.”
Kristi Hamrick, who serves as vice president of media and policy for Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, believes the proposal is “extremely disappointing.”
“It’s not been the policy of the pro-life movement to go after women,” Hamrick said. “And what I think is interesting about such laws is how it’s a little bit like when the woman was brought to the feet of Jesus caught in adultery, and to be caught in adultery, there had to be two people.”
“These laws completely ignore the fact that a child comes from two people and they focus on the mother and not the business of abortion and not the other party involved at all,” Hamrick insisted. She condemned the proposal for going after “a person who has been a second victim of the abortion industry and really attacked culturally and attacked by often her partner for the purpose of causing an abortion and pressuring her for an abortion.”
In an op-ed published by The Christian Post earlier this month, pro-life activist Victoria Robinson condemned efforts to impose criminal sentences on mothers who have abortions as harmful to the pro-life movement.
Robinson, who had an abortion several decades ago and later ended up regretting her decision, warned that rhetoric depicting women who have abortions as “murderers who deserve to be criminalized” “further shames post-abortive women who are still dealing with the traumatic aftermath of their choices, and those who are now active or considering being active in the fight for the unborn.”
Theologian Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, suggested in a 2024 podcast that women who have abortions have “varying moral culpability” based on the circumstances.
“I think a woman who’s coerced by a man into an abortion has far less moral culpability than a woman who brags about her abortion and celebrates it as a matter of personal autonomy and tweets about it,” he said.
“The categorical statement that women are just victims when they seek an abortion, that’s just not morally credible,” he added. “That’s just not morally honest, especially in a day in which so many women, particularly in the activist community, they are actually bragging about their abortions.”
Nance agreed with Mohler that there are people who “celebrate abortion,” “use it as birth control” and “love it” but identified this subset as “a very, very small group of people.” She insisted that most women who have abortions “feel like they have no other option” and “feel completely alone.”
“They’re being manipulated by a boyfriend, partner, husband, parents even and it’s our job to try to look into all of that and to change that, to create a culture of life in our nation. What they’re suggesting does not create a culture of life. In fact, it’s the antithesis of that. And so I just think we’ve got to be honest and have a conversation among ourselves and do it with respect and try to … move forward in a way that ends abortion, that reaches our shared goals.”
Hamrick responded to Mohler’s argument by asserting that “this wouldn’t be something that would be argued in social media, it would be something that would be argued in court.” Specifically addressing Mohler’s comment about women who tweet about their abortions, Hamrick countered “I think it’s very clear that people say a lot of things on social media.”
“Does that it mean it’s true? We were at the Supreme Court late not that long ago and women were panomiming taking chemical abortion pills. Did that mean that they did it?” she asked. “Social media is not a way to make public policy.”
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