David Fowler President

May 8, 2009

While many pro-life advocates anxiously hope for the day when the Roe v. Wade ruling is reversed, as a practical matter that decision is wholly irrelevant in Tennessee.

Tennessee does not have laws like other states have enacted even after Roe v. Wade because in 2000 our state Supreme Court announced a theretofore unknown fundamental right to abortion under our state Constitution and decided that the judicial standard for reviewing abortion laws should be even more stringent than required by the U.S. Supreme Court. Consequently, unlike a majority of states, we no longer have laws requiring informed consent or even a waiting period, both having been struck down by our state Supreme Court.

Since Tennesseans did not get any voice in deciding whether their Constitution should protect abortion, there have been efforts in the legislature to allow us to vote on a Constitutional amendment that would put the law back to where it was before 2000. Prior to this year three times the state Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the amendment (known as Senate Joint Resolution 127), but a House subcommittee killed it each time, even though a majority of the House members were co-sponsors.

Therefore, the issue for Tennesseans is not so much about Roe v. Wade as whether we should be allowed to vote on whether our State constitution should protect abortion. Having sponsored the original SJR 127, I often heard it said that our Constitution should not be changed because women have a “right to reproductive health care.” But where does this alleged right come from? To say it comes from the Constitution is classically circular logic, particularly since the majority reserved the right to change it. To say it is grounded in a right to privacy is to beg the question, for if that right were true and absolute, we’d have no laws.

The real issue is why ought the majority be denied the right to vote on the amendment? Is this right to abortion grounded in some source greater than the Constitution such that to risk its protected status would be morally wrong? As our Declaration of Independence states so well, there are no inalienable rights, no rights the denial of which would be morally wrong, if they are not given by a source that transcends us, meaning “our Creator.” And one of those rights is to life. Since that which grows in the womb is indisputably a human life, does its dignity not also demand protection? Hopefully our legislators will allow us to decide that question instead of just four unelected Supreme Court Judges.