NASHVILLE — Abortion-rights opponents today unveiled new efforts aimed at pressuring House members to support a constitutional amendment that effectively removes any right to an abortion from the Tennessee Constitution.

Former Sen. David Fowler, R-Chattanooga, president of Family Action of Tennessee, and Tennessee Eagle Forum President Bobbie Patray said the goal is getting 66 of the 99 House members to agree to suspend rules and bring Senate Joint Resolution 127 directly to the House floor.

The resolution would void a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling which says the Tennessee Constitution offers greater protection for abortion rights than the U.S. Constitution. “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” the resolution states.

SJR 127 has passed the Senate, but it was killed in February by the House Public Health and Family Assistance Subcommittee on a 6-3 vote. The measure has died in previous years in the Democratic-controlled subcommittee as well.

Efforts to rescind the law include a series of news conferences, including one later today in Chattanooga, and creation of a new Internet Web site (www.lifepetition.org), where supporters can sign an electronic petition and e-mail lawmakers.

“We hope that our efforts will make it clear that six people in a state House committee are preventing 6 million people in Tennessee from having a chance to make it clear that their Constitution can ban partial-birth abortion,” Mr. Fowler said. “We hope these efforts will let them see, become more aware, that their Constitution, without their consent, was effectively amended by their court.”

Rep. JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, a registered nurse who voted against the resolution, warned in February that if abortion were banned, women would still seek illegal abortions and “coming into the hospital either dead on arrival or hemorrhaging.”

Mr. Fowler cited a Feb. 29 legal opinion from Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper, who said that, under the state Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Tennessee Constitution, the federally passed ban on partial-birth abortion would be “constitutionally suspect.”