Voters on Nov. 4 are being asked to make the Tennessee constitution more open to the protection of preborn babies.
By David Tulis
By their votes Tennesseans have a chance to pare back the custom supported by many women that destroys baby girls before birth. Boys, too; but only a few care about them.
Amendment 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot makes the state constitution neutral on abortion and grants, as it were, the legislature the authority to restrict the slaughter of girls and boys someday. The general assembly has always had the authority to interpose and intervene against federal court opinions to defend its citizens. In 1973 and the Roe v. Wade opinion, the state declined to defend the unborn under the theory of judicial supremacy and purported constitutional rights of women to destroy their children as personal necessity or whim dictate.
The killing of baby girls is a right in Tennessee in many instances. But not in all. Sometimes it is a crime. The definition of criminal abortion includes the following:
Abortion” means the administration to any woman pregnant with child, whether the child be quick or not, of any medicine, drug, or substance whatever, or the use or employment of any instrument, or other means whatever, with the intent to destroy the child, thereby destroying the child before the child’s birth; *** (TCA 39-15-201, italics added)
You are not prosecuted for criminal abortion if you destroy the child “in compliance with the requirements of subsection (c).” If you do that, your claiming of her life is described by the state as an ITOP, or an induced termination of pregnancy.
Little mercy in subsection (c)
Subsection C is the gateway for the death of more than 300 girls and boys each year who might otherwise have been born to women living in Hamilton County.
➤ Destroy the girl in the “first three (3) months of pregnancy *** with the pregnant woman’s consent and pursuant to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician who is licensed or certified”
➤ The death must occur at a hospital “licensed by the state department of health, or a hospital operated by the state of Tennessee or a branch of the federal government, by the pregnant woman’s attending physician.”
➤ If the baby has “viability,” her death is permitted “in the physician’s best medical judgment” if the aborticide “is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”
In Hamilton County in 2012, 307 girls and boys belonging to women residing in the county were destroyed before birth. In that year 12,122 Tennessee girls and boys were destroyed, with a reported 3,000 more from out-of-state women included in the office of health statistics’ moldy files.
Baby shredding industry fights Amendment 1
The abortion industry is heavily invested in keeping the Tennessee status quo, which has turned the state into an abortion destination for women from other states, with a 2010 study by the CDC suggesting that one in four abortion clinic visits is from an out-of-state woman.
Planned Parenthood companies across the U.S. have donated nearly F$1.5 million to defeat Amendment 1, while the Yes on 1 committee got F$455,968 from 600 Tennesseans.
“Release of the most recent ‘Vote No’ campaign disclosure shows just 100 individual donors statewide contributing more than $100 each,” says Ed Albin, a Tennessee prolifer. “In contrast, 8 abortion facilities in Tennessee and across the country contributed a total $1.4 million dollars of $1.42 million reported raised this quarter. Individuals contributed less than $150,000 to the Vote No campaign.” The biggest amount of money was laundered through Planned Parenthood of Memphis — F$817,140. Planned Parenthood of Middle & East TN gave F$500,000.
Friendly words for pro-life position
The Vote yes on 1 position immediately takes a beating. For example:
Such tirades suggest the sort of strong feeling on the pro-choice side.
— David Tulis hosts Nooganomics.com 1 to 3 p.m. weekdays at Hot News Talk Radio 1240 an 910 AM, and invites you to connect with his listener on his commercial and profit-seeking station. Just contact him about advertising.
