Anti-abortion measure reaches dead end
NASHVILLE (AP) — An effort to amend the constitution to restrict abortion rights in Tennessee is almost certainly dead for the year.
Sen. David Fowler, who sponsored the amendment resolution, sent it back to committee Thursday after his colleagues added wording that he found unpalatable. He said the changes might allow a father who raped his daughter to have a say in whether she could have an abortion.
“That will be the end for this session,” said Fowler, R-Signal Mountain.
He said afterward that even if his colleagues want him to bring it back to the floor, there probably isn’t enough time to move it through the House before lawmakers end their work this spring.
“Everybody made their bed and now they’ll have to sleep on it,” Fowler said.
Voters must approve constitutional amendments, and Fowler had hoped to get it on the 2006 ballot. Before that, his resolution would have to be approved by a simple majority in the House and Senate this year, then by two-thirds of the members of the next General Assembly. If Fowler has to start over next year, the earliest the amendment could be before voters is 2010.
Fowler originally proposed an amendment that said “nothing in this (Tennessee) Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or the funding thereof.”
Fowler and other abortion opponents were responding to a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling that the Tennessee Constitution offers broader rights to privacy and abortion than the U.S. Constitution.
The court struck down a waiting period for women seeking abortions and other restrictions lawmakers had enacted.
Many of Fowler’s colleagues say they also oppose abortions but want to ensure protections for women with life-threatening conditions and victims of rape and incest. Fowler said he was afraid of how justices would interpret such exceptions.
So Sen. Charlotte Burks, D-Monterey, proposed a change to Fowler’s legislation that she believed would address those concerns. In essence, it said that the government could not interfere with women in those situations, and it also outright prohibited “partial-birth” abortions.
Fowler’s biggest problem with her proposal was the part that said “The government shall not interfere with the decision of the family of a child rape victim to terminate that pregnancy.”
Fowler said that would have blocked a state law that allows juvenile incest victims to get abortions without parental consent.
Other senators said the prohibition on partial-birth abortions could violate the U.S. Constitution and leave a pregnant woman whose life was in danger without an option.
Despite Fowler’s opposition, Burks’ version was approved 18-15 and he ended the debate.
Fowler said pro-abortion senators manipulated Burks, who isn’t well-versed in legislative maneuvering. “They used her and she allowed herself to be used,” Fowler said.
Burks wasn’t immediately available for comment.