NASHVILLE – In a marathon, sometimes emotional hearing Tuesday, abortion rights advocates warned Tennessee Republican senators they will sue the state and beat it in court if GOP lawmakers enact a near total abortion ban next year.
“Make no mistake, the ACLU and others will sue if this bill is passed into law,” American Civil Liberties Union-Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg told Senate Judiciary Committee members at one point during the nearly six-hour hearing. “We will sue and we will win.”
And state taxpayers would have to pick up the tab, she said.
Her warnings and similar ones from two other groups came during the second day of hearings on a proposal that originally was a “fetal heartbeat” bill that sought to ban abortions once a heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks into pregnancy.
But now, Senate sponsor Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, wants to peg the the issue of a fetus’ “viability,” changing the meaning of the legal term to the moment a pregnancy can be detected through a hormone test, about 11 to 15 days.