Posted on 11/10/2014 11:23:42 AM PST by Morgana
On election night, Tennessee voters gave the Volunteer State a chance to enact the kind of pro-life laws that have dropped abortions to historic lows in state after state across the nation. But, now, abortion activists are trying to overturn that pro-life victory.
Tennessee voters approved Amendment 1 to help ensure nothing in the state constitution could be used to secure an unlimited right to abortion. With 100% of the vote counted, Amendment 1 won with a 53-47 percent margin.
tennessee3The amendment is necessary because the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled 4-1 in 2000 that the state constitution allows unlimited abortions. It is necessary, pro-life advocates say, to be able to pass laws to limit and reduce abortions. The ruling claimed the Tennessee Constitution contains a fundamental abortion right even broader than Roe v. Wade or the federal constitution and it resulted in the striking down of numerous pro-life Tennessee laws that were helping women and limiting abortions.
Now, claiming that voter rights were violated and that ballots were not accurately counted in Tuesday’s election, pro-abortion opponents of Amendment 1 have filed suit in federal court asking for the results to be nullified.
The Yes on 1 campaign responded and called the lawsuit one more example of pro-abortion activists refusing to trust the “common sense and compassion” of Tennesseans who voted to approve Amendment 1 on November 4.
“Amendment 1 was passed with a decisive majority of Tennesseans casting a vote to approve the language,” said Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life and a coordinator for Yes on 1. “Even if you wrongly discount those who may have voted for Amendment 1 but not in the Governor’s race, there is still a margin of almost 20,000 votes in favor of the amendment.”
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“Rather than accept defeat, Planned Parenthood and the nation’s pro-abortion movement are willing to disenfranchise Tennessee voters in order to ensure that Tennessee remains an abortion destination with uninspected, unlicensed abortion facilities,” said Harris. “That was unacceptable on election day and it remains so days after the passage of Amendment 1.”
Harris told LifeNews he remains confident that the pro-abortion lawsuit is a waste of resources and that courts will recognize the clear majority of voters who supported passage of Amendment 1.
“We are moving forward to prepare legislation that will restore common sense protections in our state and which reflect the will of the voters as clearly demonstrated in Tuesday’s election,” said Harris. “To do otherwise would be an abdication of the trust placed in us by Tennessee’s electorate.”
In 2000, the court ruling was also used as precedent to strike state law requiring the inspection, regulation and licensure of abortion facilities in Tennessee, he explained. All of those pro-life protections — which have reduced abortions in some states by as much as 50 percent — could be restored now that the amendment has been approved.
The text of the amendment returns authority for abortion regulation to the people of Tennessee and their state legislators and reads as follows: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”.
Someone tell me they can't possibly win this?
"...claiming that voter rights were violated and that ballots were not accurately counted in Tuesday’s election"
Not if that's their argument... the margin was 72,000+ votes, and they would have to essentially say that the entire Tennessee election was fraudulent to make that stick.
They can’t win. They are saying that if a person didn’t vote for governor, they are ineligible to vote on the amendments. This can only be true by a twisted and contorted interpretation of the state constitution procedure for amending it.
However, even if you throw out all the votes for people who didn’t vote for governor, the amendment still passes by over 13,000 votes. The lawsuit is a waste of time.
The people have spoken. **** OFF BABYKILLERS!
Here is what the Tennessee Constitution says:
And if the people shall approve and ratify such amendment or amendments by a majority of all the citizens of the state voting for governor, voting in their favor, such amendment or amendments shall become a part of this Constitution.
Nowhere does it say that you must vote for governor in order to vote for an amendment.
it took longer than I thought it would for them to file a lawsuit
Recent history has proven they can.
See my tagline, to do what I am proposing is more important now than ever.
Thank You! Not being from Tennessee, I would not knot all this.
You are so right bunch of angry little whiners LOL!
It amounts to asking the court to rule that the TN constitution can’t be legally amended.
They're filing this in a federal court --- as I understand it, in the Sixth Circuit ----- which has already shown a sensible tendency to let states use the state electoral process to settle state issues (what a concept!) --- rather than impose interventions from a federal court. It is particularly wacky that Planned Parenthood wants the federal circuit court to interpret our TN state constitution for us. Really???? I think they're going to throw it out.
Don’t worry, pro-choice activists.
Your Scotus will fix it like they
are doing with marriage We can’t
have sovereignty in the several
States no matter what./s
This is just an effort to get a liberal judge to issue an injunction to delay implementation of the amendment for as long as possible. Hopefully the lawsuit will be dismissed with prejudice in the pretrial hearings.
The federal court will reject this as a state issue because it has nothing to do with federal law or the US Constitution.
liberal federal judges love to throw out stuff they do not like, including amendments to state constitutions
The 6th Circuit isn’t liberal. Just the other day it upheld the ban on homosexual marriage in its jurisdiction.
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