Tennessee's abortion ban takes effect Thursday. Why these women are now giving up on the state
Laura Brown is Tennessee born, raised and educated. The 34-year-old chief marketing officer grew up in Brentwood and has degrees from the University of Tennessee, Middle Tennessee State University and Vanderbilt University. She now lives in East Nashville.
But not for much longer.
“I can’t stay here,” she said. “I’m sick and heartbroken over it.”
Brown purchased a condo in East Nashville last year. But that didn’t stop her from signing a lease earlier this month for an apartment in Washington, D.C.
At the end of September, she’ll be leaving her home state. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering Tennessee’s abortion ban – which makes no exception for rape or incest – she believes she has no other choice.
“I just have this sense of absolute clarity that I cannot continue to live in a state that does not respect my right to make my own medical decisions,” Brown said.
On Thursday, Tennessee bans abortion from the moment of fertilization, stripping the state's women of a right they had on Wednesday. This shift has caused some women to wrestle with the question of whether they are prepared to give up some control over their bodies in order to live in Tennessee.
The Tennessean talked to three women who are not.
There is Brown, who is leaving the state. Jennifer Rader, 50, is preparing to move with her 10-year-old daughter to Europe. And Sandra O’Connor, 40, declined her dream job in Memphis after Roe was overturned.
It’s unclear how many people are making similar decisions, or if the law will have any impact on migration in and out of Tennessee.
Several large companies and business organizations in the state told The Tennessean they are not aware of any shift in their ability to attract workers since the decision.
And to be sure, those who hold anti-abortion views have heralded the court ruling and Tennessee's new law, which they argue extends rights to the unborn. For them, the state continues to be an attractive place to live, work and raise a family.
In the hours after the court's ruling, the legal counsel for Tennessee Right to Life said the new laws are based on the state’s “fundamental interest in human life."
But for women in like Brown, leaving Tennessee due to the abortion ban is a regular topic of conversation, she said.
“The women I know in Tennessee who have the freedom and flexibility to do it are thinking about it,” Brown said.
We answered: What questions do you have about abortion access in Tennessee following the reversal of Roe?
All three said they are fortunate to have the means and freedom to decide where they live and work. But Tennessee’s abortion ban is most likely to impact those who don’t have a choice about where they live, said Cherisse Scott, founder and CEO of SisterReach, a reproductive justice nonprofit.
“There will be a disproportionate impact on pregnant folks and families who won’t be able to relocate,” Scott said. “There may be some who get pissed off and figure out how to move to a different state, but I think more often than not people are going to be stuck.”
No specifics exceptions outlined in law
Tennessee’s abortion ban makes providing, or attempting to provide, an abortion after fertilization a class C felony, which is punished with a three- to 15-prison sentence and fines of up to $10,000.
The law has no specific legal exceptions for the health of the mother. But it provides an affirmative defense for doctors, something that would come after criminal charges. That means it places the burden on the doctor providing the abortion to prove the woman was in danger of dying or facing “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
Typically, the burden is placed on the prosecution to prove a crime, not on the defense to prove it didn’t happen.
Related: Lee says abortion law protects doctors in severe cases. Critics say it's not so clear.
Exception push: Advocates plan push for change to Tennessee abortion law with zero exceptions
In other states with similar laws, pregnant women with complications or unviable fetuses have been forced to carry until their conditions become dangerous enough to qualify for vaguely-written health of the mother exceptions.
Jennifer Rader lives in Franklin with her 10-year-old daughter and doesn’t want her to grow up in a place where abortion isn't an option.
Rader does not believe abortion should be used as a birth control method and is supportive of some degree of regulation around the procedure. But she finds it unacceptable that Tennessee will now deny a child impregnated by sexual assault the opportunity to get an abortion.
“I cannot raise a child where this is happening,” Rader said.
The situation is not a hypothetical. In 2019, the last year for which data is available, there were 14 abortions performed in Tennessee on pregnant girls between the ages of 10 and 14.
Ever since a friend moved to Portugal six years ago, Rader, who is originally from Los Angeles but has lived in Tennessee since 2000, has daydreamed about moving to the country. But after the Dobbs decision, those daydreams became immediate goals.
Rader runs her own recruitment consultancy and can work remotely. Her plan is to move with her daughter and her ex-husband, who is also able to work remotely, to Portugal by the summer of 2024. In October, Rader and her family will travel across the Atlantic to scout the village of Burgau on Portugal's southern coast.
In Portugal, abortion is legal before 10 weeks, but there are exceptions for rape, incest, fetal malformation and the health of the mother.
For Rader, it’s not just Tennessee’s current laws that are prompting her to move, but what she fears could be next.
“I need a safe haven for my daughter and my nieces,” Rader said. “It’s a totally different world now.”
'How can I choose the alternative?
Because of Dobbs and Tennessee’s trigger law, lawyer Sandra O’Connor passed on her dream job, which would have required moving from her native Michigan to Memphis.
O’Connor, 40, lives just outside of Detroit with her husband. She is a bankruptcy lawyer in private practice and works on cases for what is known as a Chapter 7 “panel trustee,” or a private citizen the federal government empowers to oversee bankruptcy proceedings.
For someone in bankruptcy law like O’Connor, a panel trustee position is the top of the field and a coveted job.
But they rarely become available.
There are fewer than 750 in the entire United States. Openings are uncommon. O’Connor has not seen a job opening in her home state of Michigan since she first started practicing law more than a decade ago, she said. But late last year, a panel trustee position opened in Memphis and O’Connor applied.
After several interviews, she was offered the job on May 19. She was thrilled.
“I'd achieved my dream,” O’Connor said in an interview.
In early June, O’Connor and her husband traveled to Memphis to look at neighborhoods and houses.
“I thought we could integrate well,” O’Connor said. “I was very excited about it.”
Then on June 24, the U.S Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
It wasn’t a total surprise, of course. O’Connor had read the draft of the decision when it was leaked in early May. But as a lawyer, she understood the court spoke through its final opinions, not drafts.
“I guess I took the approach that I would worry about it if and when the Supreme Court actually entered its decision,” she said.
When it did, she realized she didn't know how Tennessee laws handled abortion rights. So she read about the state’s six-week abortion ban that went into immediate effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned, as well as the trigger law passed in 2019 that would ban all abortions 30 days after the decision.
O’Connor realized her new position would put the full legal power of the U.S. government behind her judgment on important financial and legal matters. But when it came to some of her own medical decisions, Tennessee didn't trust her judgment at all.
“I'm thinking ‘I'm going to be moving to a state that doesn't see me as a full-fledged citizen with the ability to make decisions about my own medical care,’” she said.
After a few days of thinking and talking with friends and family, she sat down to write an email declining the position. She felt she owed the people who had offered her the job an honest explanation for why she was turning down a prestigious position.
“My ability to obtain appropriate medical care is likely to be severely restricted or even eliminated if I were to move to Tennessee. It is unthinkable that I would need to travel out-of-state to obtain routine or even emergent medical care on the basis of sex,” she wrote. “I am 40 years old. I grew up believing that I was equal to men. I have conducted myself consistent with that understanding and I have refused to accept any discriminatory treatment for my entire life.”
The responses from the U.S. Trustee’s office were kind and polite. And although she didn’t tell any of her colleagues about the job she almost took, she shared her email with a friend who encouraged her to post it online.
She eventually posted it on Reddit, minus some identifying details, where it was upvoted nearly 14,000 times and elicited hundreds of comments, many of which were from people who said they were leaving, or trying to find a way to leave, states that were implementing abortion bans.
O’Connor emphasized she is happy. She likes her job and her life in Michigan. But she still regularly checks the webpage where trustee positions are listed on the off chance a trustee job appears in a place with laws that respect her bodily autonomy. She recognizes, however, that there’s a possibility there won’t be another chance. Maybe this was her one chance and she chose to pass.
“But how can I choose the alternative?” she asks.
Josh Keefe can be reached via email at jkeefe@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @thejoshkeefe.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Abortion in Tennessee: With trigger ban, women contemplate leaving
