Tennessee Republicans Refuse to Hear Equal Protection Bill
House Bill 570 and Senate Bill 738, which would have abolished abortion in Tennessee, were recently introduced as the first equal protection legislation in Tennessee state history. In spite of significant opposition, the effort rallied substantial high-profile endorsements and widespread Christian conservative grassroots support in Tennessee.
But rather than hearing the legislation, every single Republican member of the Tennessee House Population Health Subcommittee refused to make the motion on March 10 that would enable House Bill 570 to be heard, causing the failure of the effort.
House Bill 570 Rallies Widespread Support
House Bill 570 and Senate Bill 738, respectively sponsored by Tennessee State Representative Jody Barrett and Tennessee State Senator Mark Pody, were proposed as the strongest anti-abortion legislation ever filed in Tennessee.
The legislation recognized that “innocent human life, created in the image of God, should be equally protected under the laws from fertilization to natural death,” and therefore required that all preborn babies are “protected with the same criminal and civil laws protecting the lives of born persons.”
While new abortion regulations entered into effect in Tennessee after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, there are more than 15,000 preborn babies from Tennessee murdered every year as of 2024, including over 5,000 telehealth abortions occurring on Tennessee soil annually. Pro-Life laws in Tennessee have loopholes granting women immunity for willfully having abortions, meaning that telehealth abortions and other types of self-induced abortion are still legally occurring at massive levels.
In recognition of this sobering reality, Christian and conservative voices from Tennessee and across the country rallied to express their support for House Bill 570 and Senate Bill 738.
Clint Pressley, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, was one such voice, affirming in a public statement that “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.” The endorsement from Pressley came after years of progress for equal protection within the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant association of churches in the nation.
Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh, who lives in Tennessee, also publicly signaled his approval of the legislation, saying on his show that the logic of the effort was unassailable.
“The only way you don’t end up with the same conclusion as the people who wrote this bill is if you disagree with the first proposition, which is that unborn babies are humans,” Walsh remarked. “But if you agree with that proposition, I don’t see how you can logically end up any other place.”
Tennessee Stands, a prominent conservative grassroots entity in the state, endorsed the legislation, while Tennessee Stands executive director Gary Humble expressed his staunch support on numerous occasions. Other anti-abortion organizations and leaders from across the country, such as the Danbury Institute and White Rose Resistance executive director Seth Gruber, shared a call to action assembled by the Foundation to Abolish Abortion and encouraged supporters to contact members of the Tennessee House Population Health Subcommittee.
Various pastors in Tennessee exhorted their congregations to support the equal protection bills, observing that churches have the duty to witness against the works of darkness in their nations. Christians from across Tennessee, led by groups in the state such as Students for Abolition and Alliance Family Services, organized grassroots efforts to lobby at the Tennessee Capitol on behalf of the legislation.
While many Christians and conservatives rallied in support of the equal protection legislation, there were also substantial headwinds from the left-wing media, and even from major Pro-Life establishment groups.
Pro-Abortion and Pro-Life Opposition
House Bill 570 and Senate Bill 738 were instantly the subjects of left-wing media narratives meant to dissuade Tennessee lawmakers and the broader public from supporting the effort.
The Tennessean published an article emphasizing that the legislation could allow women who have abortions to receive the death penalty, even as the bills were merely intended to protect preborn babies with the same homicide and assault laws already protecting born people.
Such catastrophized rhetoric, as explained by Barrett, was borrowed by other left-wing media outlets and many other voices, including some ostensible conservatives, to oppose the concept of equal protection using the most remotely drastic outcome of the legislation.
The Tennessee Lookout published an article falsely claiming that Pody was planning to withdraw Senate Bill 738, when in reality Pody had said that he was waiting to see how much support House Bill 570 would achieve. The outlet changed their misleading report only after several rounds of correspondence with the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, which also worked to correct the record in other news outlets referencing the inaccurate article.
Beyond left-wing media outlets, which often portray equal protection bills in an inflammatory manner across the country, Pro-Life establishment groups and leaders opposed the legislation.
Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins echoed the claims from The Tennessee Lookout, falsely asserting in her Substack that the legislation had “died in committee today.” Students for Life ignored repeated public and private requests to fix the inaccuracy, which threatened to dissuade anti-abortion Christians who would have otherwise supported the bills.
In a more explicit move against the legislation, Students for Life Vice President of Media and Policy Kristi Hamrick said in an interview with The Christian Post, a national conservative news outlet, that the effort was “extremely disappointing.” Hamrick falsely claimed that such laws “focus on the mother” who has an abortion rather than the abortionist or the father, and she later celebrated when the legislation failed in Subcommittee.
Family Action Council of Tennessee shared an opinion piece against the legislation on social media, even though the article contained both pro-abortion euphemisms and blatant misrepresentations about the bills. Christian grassroots activists repeatedly witnessed representatives with Tennessee Right to Life, the leading Pro-Life establishment group in the state, at the Tennessee Capitol encouraging lawmakers to oppose the equal protection bills.
The opposition from Pro-Life establishment groups, even amid the groundswell of support for the bills from Christians and conservatives, contributed to the failure of the effort.
House Bill 570 Fails in Committee
Barrett had placed House Bill 570 on notice, meaning that the Tennessee House Population Health Subcommittee was required to schedule House Bill 570 on their calendar. They scheduled the legislation for March 10, and Christians from across the state arrived at the Tennessee Capitol, ready to testify in favor of abolishing abortion.
Bradley Pierce, the president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, and John Rice-Cameron, the legislative liaison for the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, attended the Subcommittee meeting in preparation to defend the bill.
In order to be heard, House Bill 570 required a motion from a member of the Subcommittee, followed by a second from another member. Because none of the Republican lawmakers made the motion, House Bill 570 instantly failed, and the Subcommittee promptly moved to other business. The murder of preborn babies in Tennessee will therefore continue for another year because of the cowardice and lack of fortitude from Pro-Life Republicans.
Christians nevertheless responded by singing hymns, trusting that God had started a work to abolish abortion in Tennessee that would last beyond a single legislative session.
Bradley Pierce, the president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, said during a press conference after the failure of House Bill 570 that there were indeed many reasons not to be discouraged.
“We saw this bill defeated, but today is just the beginning,” Pierce remarked. “God says, ‘Do not despise the day of small things,’ and ‘First the blade, and then the grass.’ Things start small and they grow, and that is what’s happening here.”
This year was indeed the first time equal protection bills had been introduced in Tennessee, reflecting years of hard work from Christians in the state and elsewhere. In spite of the legislation failing to advance, there are now hundreds of Christians across the state mobilized and connected to one another, enabling them to coordinate in support of the legislation in future sessions.
We pray that God would use the church in Tennessee to abolish abortion and establish equal protection of the laws for preborn babies in the state, for the glory of His name and for the love of preborn babies made in His image.