Tennessee House passes 20-week abortion ban; bill heads to Haslam

Tennessee lawmakers on Wednesday gave final legislative approval to a 20-week abortion ban that now heads to Gov. Bill Haslam and would put Tennessee among the states with the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

The House voted along nearly party lines on the Senate version of the bill after a lengthy debate. Democrats were vocal in their opposition. No Republicans voted against the bill, but several did not vote. House Speaker Beth Harwell initially did not cast a vote, but later indicated she wanted to be recorded in favor of the bill.

The legislation now goes to Haslam, who can sign it into law, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.

Haslam has rarely vetoed bills in the past, and has said he reviews every legislation before making a decision on what action to take. He said after the Senate passed the bill Monday he would review the bill with his staff and Attorney General Herbert Slatery before deciding what to do.

"We will see," Haslam said. "When it gets to us, we'll have those conversations both with the Attorney General our own review of the bill before we make our decision."

The bill would require a test for viability and gestational age before a doctor could perform an abortion and would subject doctors who violate the law to a Class C felony charge that can carry up to 15 years in prison.

Initially, state Attorney General Herbert Slatery said the bill was "constitutionally suspect" for provisions that were later amended out that required both subjective and objective evaluations of viability. The subjective evaluation was removed from the legislation after Slatery's opinion, which helped the bill gain more favor from lawmakers.

State law currently does not define fetal viability, which is a central element of the bill and the surrounding controversy. Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, the sponsor of the Senate bill, and Rep. Matthew Hill, the House sponsor both have argued that fetuses can survive outside the womb after 24 weeks, but opponents have cited doctors who have argued there is no definitive medical test to determine if the baby will survive or not.

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Hill, R-Jonesborough, said 20 states have similar laws, and argued that none of them have been successfully challenged in court.

"How anyone can advocate for the taking of that life after science and medicine have deemed it to be able to survive as an individual human being is beyond me," Hill said.

The Guttmacher Institute, a private research group that supports abortion rights, lists 14 states that ban abortions after the 20th week post fertilization. Two additional states ban it after the 20th week from the beginning of a woman's last menstrual period, which takes two weeks off a fetus' age at conception, and that would include Tennessee if Haslam signs the bill. Both Arizona's and Idaho's 20-week abortion bans were struck down separately in federal courts, and Supreme Court justices declined to hear Arizona's case in 2014.

Babies born at 22 weeks after a woman's last menstrual period, 20 weeks after conception, are considered extremely preterm. Single-child pregnancies last an average of 40 weeks from the first day of the last menstrual period to birth, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

About a quarter of babies born at that 22-week last-menstrual-period age survived to toddlerhood, according to a study of almost 5,000 extremely early births at 24 hospitals in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Neonatal Research Network. Babies born before that age have not survived.

Reps. Sherry Jones and John Ray Clemmons, both Nashville Democrats, spoke passionately against the bill. Clemmons proposed an amendment that would overhaul the bill and added an exception for rape and incest. He wanted to “plead” and “beg” the members to adopt the amendment, which ultimately failed.

In one of the more fiery dissents, Jones said the House should instead punish men who commit rape and incest on young girls.

“What we need to do is punish men who can’t keep their zippers up,” she said.

State Attorney General Herbert Slatery said in an opinion that the legislation and another abortion-related bill that was filed this year were “constitutionally suspect,” but was prepared to defend the law if challenged in court.

Slatery also declined to enforce two other abortion-related measures that were struck down by the Supreme Court last summer that resulted from a case in Texas.

The Tennessee Medical Association, a group that represents and lobbies on behalf of physicians, has been neutral on the issue. Dave Chaney, a spokesman for TMA, said though the group is neutral on the issue itself, they've been following the legislation closely "because if it becomes law we will need to help our members understand the changes and ensure they practice within the confines of the law."

Several protests have been staged in the Capitol related to the measure. Again on Wednesday, several women dressed as handmaids in scarlet robes and white bonnets, a reference to the Margaret Atwood novel "The Handmaid's Tale," and held signs that read "We are not incubators" and "We are NOT Tennessee handmaids."

Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee President and CEO Jeff Teague said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by the legislature's action, and urged Haslam to veto the bill.

"(The bill) will violate a woman's guaranteed right as found by the U.S. Supreme Court to safe, legal abortion," he told The Tennessean in a text message statement Wednesday afternoon.

He also said it would make Tennessee "one of the most restrictive states in the nation for women's reproductive rights."

USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Jake Lowary covers Tennessee politics and state government for the USA Today Network. Reach him at 931-237-1583 or follow him on Twitter @JakeLowary.