Tennessee lawmakers kill bill seeking to criminally punish women who have abortions

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, March 11, 2026

A subcommittee in the Republican-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives has killed a bill that would have imposed criminal penalties of homicide on women who have abortions, as the pro-life movement remains divided on that particular approach. 

The Tennessee House of Representatives’ Population Health Subcommittee discussed House Bill 570 at a Tuesday hearing. State Rep. Michele Carringer, R-Knoxville, the chairwoman of the subcommittee, asked members of the subcommittee if she had a motion on the bill so she could add a controversial amendment to the bill that would impose criminal penalties on women who have abortions. 

While Carringer did not explicitly outline the bill's provisions, the high-profile nature of the bill drew protesters to the chamber. When no one offered a motion, she announced that the “bill fails for a lack of motion.”

As the subcommittee attempted to move on to other bills, protesters gathered in the audience shouted, prompting Carringer to threaten “clear the committee” to the point where “no one is allowed in.” She followed through on the threat as the protests did not die down. 

The amendment would have changed 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.”

The measure would have clarified 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.”

The proposal caused division in the pro-life movement, with supporters in the abortion abolition movement praising it as a necessary step to protecting all unborn life, while others warned that it could be counterproductive to the pro-life 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,” wrote Southern Baptist Convention President Clint Pressley in an X post published last month reacting to the proposal. “Tennessee now has the opportunity to set an example of how states can protect the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.” 

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Jody Barrett, dismissed the idea that the amendment is “targeting mothers” as a “talking point” in a statement to WTVF. According to Barrett, “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.”

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. He asserted that “a woman who’s coerced by a man into an abortion” is less culpable than “a woman who brags about her abortion and celebrates it as a matter of personal autonomy and tweets about it.”

Pro-life activist Victoria Robinson expressed concern in an op-ed published by The Christian Post last month that rhetoric depicting women who have abortions as “murderers who deserve to be criminalized” has the effect of shaming “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.” 

Penny Young Nance of the socially conservative advocacy organization Concerned Women offered a similar analysis in an interview with CP about the Tennessee bill last month. Calling the proposal “wrongheaded,” “bad strategy” and “not right thinking,” Nance maintained that “It changes … our ability to bring people to our side and harms the movement overall.”

Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life of America described the proposal as “extremely disappointing,” telling CP “It’s not been the policy of the pro-life movement to go after women” because women are often “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.”