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Abortion Advocates Appeal To Supreme Court Over Tennessee Abortion Restrictions

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Abortion advocates are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court over a Tennessee amendment allowing the state to implement abortion restrictions, arguing the amendment was passed by unfair voting practices.

Tennessee’s Amendment 1 says that nowhere in the state’s constitution is a provision that “secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion,” allowing lawmakers to “enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion” if they so choose.

The state amendment was passed in 2014 with 53 percent of the vote. In order for an amendment to pass, more votes in favor of the amendment must be cast than half of the total votes cast in the same ballot’s gubernatorial race, NewsChannel11 reported. The measure passed because its overall count was greater than the turnout in Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s re-election.

Despite the fact that Tennessee has counted constitutional amendments the same way for over 50 years, abortion advocates claim the method is unfair because those in favor of greater abortion restrictions had an incentive to withhold their votes in the 2014 governor’s race. It follows that pro-abortion advocates came out in droves to vote in the governor’s race so the likelihood of the constitutional amendment passing would be small.

Pro-abortion Tennesseans are now petitioning to the Supreme Court for a recount.

“This case raises the important question of whether and to what extent a state’s administration of an election survives Fourteenth Amendment scrutiny when it tilts the field by both compelling voters on one side of an issue to vote in another, separate race and by strongly incentivizing voters on the other side of the same issue to avoid voting in that separate race,” their petition states.

The petition comes after a district court ruled in April 2016 that the state must recount the vote that ratified Tennessee’s Amendment 1. That decision was overturned in January, however, after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the state’s ballot counting system didn’t infringe on voting rights.

“Although the subject matter of abortion rights will continue to be controversial in Tennessee and across the nation, it is time for uncertainty surrounding the people’s 2014 approval and ratification of Amendment 1 to be put to rest,” the ruling stated, according to the Tennessean.

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