PDF: Senate Joint Resolution 127
NASHVILLE — Top House Democrats say former Sen. David Fowler, R-Signal Mountain, is misleading the public about the legal status of late-term abortions in Tennessee as he and other abortion opponents work to revive a proposed state constitutional amendment on the practice.
“For him to go on a tear suggesting that somehow our state Constitution would prevent enforcement of a federal law is just a lie, and he knows better,” charged House Majority Leader Gary Odom, D-Nashville.
Rep. Odom pointed to a just-released Tennessee attorney general legal opinion stating that under the federal Partial Birth Abortion Act upheld last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, “it is a federal crime for any physician to deliberately and intentionally perform an intact dilation and extraction procedure in Tennessee.”
Mr. Fowler, president of Family Action of Tennessee, laughed and called charges he is misleading Tennesseans “preposterous.”
“What is so funny is that we’re not saying the state Constitution prohibits enforcement of a federal law,” said Mr. Fowler, an attorney. “I would be an idiot to say that. I’m saying the state Constitution prevents Tennessee’s legislature from passing a law that would ban partial-birth abortions not covered by the federal law.”
The federal law, Mr. Fowler said, states the late-term abortion must be “in or affecting interstate commerce,” and as a result, he maintained, there could be exceptions.
“Tennessee needs a law so that it is not subject to what a federal court might say about the federal law and whether a federal prosecutor, a political appointee, would even be willing to prosecute anything that is not clearly ‘in or affecting interstate commerce,’” Mr. Fowler said.
Earlier this week, Rep. Henry Fincher, D-Cookeville, accused Mr. Fowler of being “misleading” by omitting mention of the federal law and that Tennessee still has a 1997 law ban on late-term abortions.
“It’s misleading, it’s misguided, and I think ultimately it’s a political ploy,” Rep. Fincher, an attorney said. “That’s the most disgusting thing.”
But Mr. Fowler noted that Web sites operated by abortion-rights proponents including NARAL Pro-Choice America say Tennessee’s law effectively was rendered unconstitutional by a prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Nebraska case.
Earlier this week, Mr. Fowler and Tennessee Eagle Forum President Bobbie Patray announced their last-ditch effort to push Senate Joint Resolution 127, which passed the Senate earlier this year but died in a House subcommittee as it has in past years.
Abortion opponents hope to generate the 66 votes needed to bypass the panel and bring the resolution directly to the House floor.
So far, they have signed up 48 House members, including five Democrats, according to the Web site www.LifePetition.org, set up by Mr. Fowler.
The resolution seeks to void a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling that said the Tennessee Constitution provides for greater privacy protections than the U.S. Constitution.
The ruling threw out state laws that required a 48-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion, mandated that physicians would provide women with only detailed information about the procedure and that second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital.
While legislative supporters of the resolution say it would allow lawmakers to pass “common-sense” protections such as a 48-hour waiting period struck down in 2000, Mr. Fowler and allies are focusing on the late-term abortion issue.
In a news release accompanying Mr. Fowler’s announcement of the new push, the headline stated “Statewide Effort Featuring Video and Web Site to Promote Passage of SJR 127 to allow banning of partial-birth in TN.”
In his own remarks, Mr. Fowler, an attorney, has been more exact in his phrasing.
“We hope that our efforts will make it clear that six people in the state House are preventing 6 million people in the state of Tennessee from having a chance to make clear that their constitution can ban partial-birth abortion,” he said in a news conference on Tuesday.
Rep. JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, a registered nurse, is one of the six lawmakers who voted to kill the resolution in the House Public Health and Family Assistance Subcommittee.
“I didn’t realize we had 6 million voters in Tennessee,” she said.
Rep. Favors said Mr. Fowler’s efforts won’t change her mind.
“I hope that anyone who is pregnant can find a way” to bring the pregnancy to term, she said. “But there are circumstances where if an abortion is indicated, that person should have access.”
