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According to Dessert News, a proposed amendment by two republican lawmakers in Tennessee would classify abortions as fetal homicide; as a result, those women would be subject to life imprisonment or death.

This amendment, co-sponsored by Rep. Jody Barrett and Sen. Mark Pody, says, “all preborn children should be protected with the same criminal and civil laws protecting the lives of born persons by repealing provisions that permit prenatal homicide and assault.”

Exceptions to this proposed amendment are only in the case of a miscarriage or “unintentional death of an unborn child” after “undertaking life-saving procedures” to save the life of the mother and “to save the life of the unborn child.”

According to Tennessee Lookout, Pody has already come out and said that this bill does not have the votes to move forward and potentially will not even survive the House of Representatives. 

While it is great that this proposal will not move forward, that does not mean that it is completely harmless. When ideas like this are made, they spark conversations on the topic and make ideas like this more acceptable in the future. 

Tennessee currently has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, prohibiting abortion at any stage of pregnancy with almost no exceptions to this law. Adding the threat of life imprisonment or death to the table, even in a bill that will not make it through the House, only adds to the fear around the situation and makes it as if medical decisions are federal crimes.

That is a stark contrast to what the proposal is supposed to portray. According to The Independent, the reason for this amendment proposal is to be for life and protect life. How does it count as protecting a life if you’re threatening to execute a woman?

This argument of whether states should classify abortions as legal or not has been an issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since then, the argument has become more extreme on both sides of the argument. 

This proposal is no different, sparking responses from both sides. In an X post, Clint Pressley, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, voiced his support. 

“I am glad to support HB 570 and SB 738, two bills in the Tennessee legislature that would protect every preborn child in Tennessee from abortion,” he said. “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.” 

On the other side of this argument, Israel Cook, the state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said, “There’s nothing pro-life about this bill,” according to The Hill.

No matter which side of the argument you lie on, I hope we can all see that the idea of death for an abortion is absurd and that we ask ourselves if the goal is to protect life or end it. Either way, this proposal should not have even been proposed. 

Sadly, this extreme proposal will only make the topic more common in public and political conversations, and today’s amendment, which is unlikely to surpass the house may one day become feasible.