State attorneys are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit over Tennessee’s near-total abortion ban after a new law adding limited exceptions for medical emergencies went into effect earlier this year.
Jenna Adamson, assistant solicitor general in Tennessee’s Office of the Attorney General, told a three-judge panel Tuesday that the new law “made significant changes” to Tennessee’s abortion ban and “makes this a different case.” She argued the lawsuit is now moot.
But attorneys with the Center for Reproductive Rights countered the new legislation, effective April 29, is written in vague and ambiguous language that still leaves doctors uncertain if they are following or breaking the law when providing an emergency abortion. Doctors found to have violated Tennessee’s abortion law face the revocation of their licenses and lengthy prison sentences.
“This really leaves us in no different place than we were before,” said Nicolas Kabat, a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The fear Tennessee physicians have that they will be prosecuted for providing life-saving abortions, and the fear patients have that they will be denied them “have not changed one bit,” as a result of the new law, Kabat said.