State attorneys are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit over Tennessee’s near-total abortion ban after a new law adding limited exceptions for medical emergencies went into effect earlier this year.
Jenna Adamson, assistant solicitor general in Tennessee’s Office of the Attorney General, told a three-judge panel Tuesday that the new law “made significant changes” to Tennessee’s abortion ban and “makes this a different case.” She argued the lawsuit is now moot.
But attorneys with the Center for Reproductive Rights countered the new legislation, effective April 29, is written in vague and ambiguous language that still leaves doctors uncertain if they are following or breaking the law when providing an emergency abortion. Doctors found to have violated Tennessee’s abortion law face the revocation of their licenses and lengthy prison sentences.
“This really leaves us in no different place than we were before,” said Nicolas Kabat, a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The fear Tennessee physicians have that they will be prosecuted for providing life-saving abortions, and the fear patients have that they will be denied them “have not changed one bit,” as a result of the new law, Kabat said.
Judges temporarily block discipline of doctors who perform emergency abortions in Tennessee
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2023, represents seven Tennessee women denied emergency abortions and two physicians who say they fear criminal prosecution for providing lifesaving care. The American Medical Association joined the challenge in March.
Tennessee’s abortion ban went into effect in 2022.
A year later, lawmakers amended the legislation to include a “medical condition exception.”
The 2023 exception says a doctor may perform an abortion “using reasonable medical judgement, based upon the facts known to the physician at the time” if the abortion is necessary to prevent a pregnant woman’s death or to “prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” The legislation also added molar and ectopic pregnancies as exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. It was this 2023 legislation the lawsuit initially challenged as overly vague.
In 2024, the three-judge panel presiding over the case temporarily blocked the state’s medical board from disciplining doctors for providing emergency abortions.
Their ruling also outlined four specific pregnancy-related conditions that qualify as “medical necessity” exceptions to the state’s abortion ban, noting the “confusion and lack of consensus within the Tennessee medical community on the circumstances requiring necessary health- and life-saving abortion care.”
Three judge panel hears arguments over ‘unconstitutionally vague’ exceptions to abortion ban
That temporary injunction remains in place.
This year lawmakers further amended the state’s abortion ban to say doctors “may” provide an abortion for certain conditions that mirror those outlined in the panel’s temporary injunction.
Those exceptions include: previable pre-term premature rupture of membranes (the rupture of the amniotic sac before a fetus is viable); inevitable abortion; severe preeclampsia; mirror syndrome associated with fetal hydrops (a life threatening build up of fluid); and an infection that can result in uterine rupture or loss of fertility. The 2025 legislation also specifically says mental health diagnoses may not be used as an exception to the state’s abortion ban.
The three-judge panel hearing arguments Tuesday were Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal, Judge Sandra Donaghy and Chancellor Kasey Cullbreath. The judges gave no timeline on when they will issue a decision about whether the case will move forward or be dismissed.
Moskal said they would “issue our ruling as soon as we are able to do so.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.