Some Republican legislators who have pushed hardline bans on abortion now believe they went too far, but unraveling laws already passed is harder than passing them in the first place.
One such legislator is Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs. In 2019, he co-authored the state’s “trigger bill” that would enact some of the strictest abortion bans in the nation and harsh penalties for doctors who violate them — if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
In 2019, he never imagined the nation’s high court actually would reverse the ruling that gave women the right to terminate a pregnancy. Passing his “trigger bill” — something that was happening in Republican-controlled legislatures nationwide — seemed like an act of “political theater,” he said Jan. 31 in an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
“The truth was I thought it would never come to be,” the 71-year-old retired trauma surgeon said.
But it did come to be, noted NPR’s Katia Riddle: “Three years later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe and the law went into effect. Briggs has not been especially contrite about his role in this legislation, but he has been fighting an uphill battle to change it. Some here say he has a long way to go to make things right.”
What worries Briggs now is the very thing that concerns many Americans who are not otherwise “pro-abortion”: There needs to be exceptions for certain cases where a fetus is not viable and where the mother’s life or health are endangered.
“To me what’s unacceptable is if you determine that there is a pregnancy that cannot live outside the womb, and you’re going to force that woman to carry that to term.”
Briggs now says: “To me what’s unacceptable is if you determine that there is a pregnancy that cannot live outside the womb, and you’re going to force that woman to carry that to term.”
Such is the case in states beyond Tennessee, such as Texas, where a mother carrying a severely deformed fetus that endangered her own life recently was forced to flee the state for an abortion after the state attorney general and the state Supreme Court refused to grant an exception to a strict ban — even though the law allows for medical exceptions.
In Tennessee, Sen. Briggs now sounds like a liberal in comparison to his stance five years ago: “The most basic human right we have is the right for a couple to be able to have children and a family.”
He worries the very bill he co-sponsored threatens that basic right if women are forced to carry unviable pregnancies. He’s now working on legislation that would give more authority to doctors to determine when truly exceptional and dangerous cases demand the medical termination of a pregnancy.
That’s a position that resonates with 76% of Tennesseans but is seen as a threat to other Republican legislators and hardline anti-abortion advocates.
NPR interviewed Will Brewer, a lobbyist and legal counsel for Tennessee Right to Life. Brewer says Sen. Briggs “wants to create exceptions that we believe are too broad.”
He warned: “Bad faith actors can fit a lot of things into that exception and get away with it.”
According to 2023 polling by Gallup, only 13% of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Another 34% believe abortion should be legal “under any circumstances,” and 51% say it should be legal “only under certain circumstances.”
Gallup found 61% of Americans believe overturning Roe v. Wade was a “bad thing” and 38% believe it was a “good thing.”
Yet with conservative Republican supermajorities controlling the levers of government in 28 states, the most staunch ant-abortion ideology prevails — even against lawmakers like Briggs who want to roll back their own bills. Republican legislators fear they will be opposed in primary elections, where the most conservative viewpoints drive the turnout.
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