Republicans in Tennessee have introduced a bill that would allow the death penalty for women who have abortions.
House Bill 570 would allow the death penalty for women who have abortions and charge them with murder for “participation in the murder of their own unborn child.”
The bill is reportedly co-sponsored by state Rep. Jody Barrett and Sen. Mark Pody, the bill’s sponsor, but is not yet on the schedule for consideration. Tennessean.
The legislation would allow prosecutors to charge women who have abortions with fetal murder. This offense is punishable by life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and, in some cases, the death penalty.
Tennessee has some of the strictest abortion laws in the United States since the “trigger ban” was implemented in 2022. The Human Life Protection Act prohibits all fertilization abortions, including rape or incest.
Tennessee Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow the death penalty for women who have abortions (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
In addition, performing an abortion is a Class C felony and the doctor who performs the abortion may be fined and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
tennessee HB0570 specifically removes further legal protections for women in the state and classifies harm to an unborn child as harm to a living person, or a “person born alive,” the report said.
Exceptions include cases of “spontaneous miscarriage” or “unintentional death of the unborn child” after “life-saving procedures were performed” to save the mother’s life and “to save the life of the unborn child.”
According to media reports, no other exceptions were specified in the text of the amendment. Retroactive prosecution of women accused of such conduct will not be allowed before July 1 (assuming the bill comes into force on that date).
independent Barrett and Purdy’s offices have been contacted for comment.
Republican Congressman Monty Fritz, who co-sponsored the bill and is running for governor in Tennessee, has long supported the idea that women who undergo abortions should face the death penalty.
Tennessee has some of the strictest abortion laws in the United States since the “trigger ban” was implemented in 2022. The Human Life Protection Act prohibits all fertilization abortions, including rape or incest. (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
“Murder is murder. I know that’s hard for people to hear, and I promise, I’m not trying to be harsh on it,” Fritz told The Tennessean Caller, adding that abortion should be a “capital crime.”
“We failed to identify that jellybean-sized baby as a human being. If we killed a human being, we would have to say it was murder,” he told the outlet.
Elsewhere, Clint Pressley, president of the Evangelical Southern Baptist Convention, also backed the bill last week, writing on social media that it would “protect every unborn child in Tennessee from abortion by providing equal protection under the law for unborn children.”
“By protecting the life of an unborn child with the same laws that protect those already born, we are loving our neighbor in the womb as ourselves,” he said, adding that Tennessee “now has an opportunity to set an example of how states can protect the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.”
Barrett and Purdy’s bill is also supported by the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, a nonprofit whose mission is to “elevate and preserve the image of God by promoting sound public policies that provide equal legal protection for all unborn human beings.”
