Tennessee Republicans dropped the ball on abortion

A viral video from Memphis recently drew national attention for good reason. A woman was filmed at a gender-reveal party murdering her preborn baby with abortion pills.

In the video, she aired grievances about her “baby daddy” and announced that she would not complete the pregnancy. As friends watched, cheered, and even shouted “kill it,” she opened a packet of abortion pills while whooping and singing, “Thank you, Jesus.” Instead of announcing whether the baby was a boy or a girl, she declared the baby was “no gender” and swallowed the pills.

Tennessee Republicans understand perfectly well that Democrats have no real power in the state. They can govern as they please. And they chose not to abolish abortion.

The episode horrified pro-lifers. But much of the reaction missed a harder truth: Tennessee Republicans recently had a chance to stop this kind of killing and chose not to.

In a later interview, the woman said she had consumed alcohol throughout the pregnancy and that she and the father believed the baby would be born “slow.” That, she said, is why they decided on an abortion. She then celebrated the abortion with the interviewer, who joked that she had managed both a gender reveal and a “funeral” on the same day.

The whole episode stands as a brutal commentary on the culture. Some pro-life leaders still describe women as abortion’s “second victims.” But more women now openly and brazenly celebrate the killing of their preborn children. In recent years, a sickening “shout your abortion” culture has taken root among women who do not merely defend abortion, but praise it as liberation.

This case drew intense backlash. Yet the Christians expressing horror may not realize that Tennessee lawmakers had a chance only months ago to stop such violence and refused to act.

Many state and national pro-life groups insist that the abortion issue is basically settled in Tennessee. Americans United for Life says “abortion is illegal in Tennessee, with limited exceptions” and that “chemical abortion pills are tightly regulated.” Tennessee Right to Life claims “abortion is illegal in Tennessee” and that the state is “a national leader” in protecting preborn babies. Students for Life Action has even described Tennessee as “abortion-free.”

The Memphis video exposes those claims as false.

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The woman and her friends were able to obtain the supposedly “tightly regulated” abortion pills, use them to kill a baby, record the act, and post it online for the entire country to see. They could do that because Tennessee law grants complete immunity to women who procure abortions. In practice, that means no deterrent exists to stop a woman from willfully murdering her preborn child.

The statute that supposedly makes Tennessee “abortion-free” states plainly that it “does not subject the pregnant woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to criminal conviction or penalty.”

In other words, the woman in the video cannot be held criminally accountable for intentionally killing her baby, no matter how openly murderous her intent was, because Tennessee’s pro-life laws shield her and every other woman from penalty.

Lawmakers had a chance to close that loophole this year through House Bill 570, which would have established equal protection for preborn babies. Instead of banning prenatal homicide only for third-party abortionists, the bill would have applied the same murder laws that protect those already born and criminalized abortion as murder for anyone willfully involved.

But when the bill appeared, pro-life establishment groups immediately pressured lawmakers to avoid supporting it. None of the Republicans on the Tennessee House Population Health Subcommittee even made a motion to grant House Bill 570 a hearing.

That failure matters because Tennessee is not some purple state with divided government. Republicans hold supermajorities in both legislative chambers. They recently pushed through redistricting and punished Democrats who objected. In other words, Tennessee Republicans understand perfectly well that Democrats have no real power in the state. They can govern as they please.

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And they chose not to abolish abortion.

That means any woman in Tennessee, no matter how brazen or malicious, can commit prenatal homicide without fear of legal consequences.

The baby murdered in that video was no outlier. More than 5,000 preborn babies are killed every year in Tennessee through abortion pills obtained through telehealth providers. Thousands more die outside the formal medical system.

If Tennessee lawmakers want to stop this legally tolerated bloodshed, they must establish equal protection for preborn babies and treat them as the image-bearers of God they are. That means abolishing abortion and criminalizing it once and for all.