Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood State Their Values

Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood will fight every day to: Keep Planned Parenthood’s Doors Open: Ensure Patients Have Access to Expert Reproductive Health Care Defend against attempts to play politics with PP health centers. Stop any legislation and regulations that defunds Planned Parenthood, and enforce Medicaid law that guarantees people’s access to Planned Parenthood. Ensure that PP health centers can continue to deliver expert health care services to people of every color. Protect and promote the health and rights of women and girls globally. Maintain Access to Safe, Legal Abortion: Get Politicians Out of Personal, Medical Decisions Preserve the right to an abortion as the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade guaranteed. Demand that our leaders stop passing laws clearly designed to undercut a person’s access to a safe abortion. Secure laws, policies and practices to protect doctors and patients from harassment, intimidation, and violence. Fighting for Healthcare Access for All: Keep Politicians from De-Stabilizing the Entire Healthcare System Secure laws, policies, and practices to advance equitable access to reproductive health services regardless of income, zip code, or the view of their employer. Preserve adequate funding for health safety net programs that serve underserved communities, people of color, immigrant and LGBTQ people. Defend against efforts to repeal laws and policies that have drastically improved healthcare access and quality.   Keep Families Together: Fight Against Racist, Archaic Immigration Policies Defend against deportation practices that aim to tear families apart. Demand that our leaders pass comprehensive immigration reform that creates a legal path to enter and stay in the United States. Continue to be a safe space where people without documentation can access quality, affordable health care. The anti-abortion legislation we’re facing this year in the Tennessee General Assembly is extreme. Three bills have already been put forth by state senate and house legislators and are up for debate in the coming weeks: 20-week abortion ban SB 766/ HB 101 (click on bill number for latest status), sponsored by Sen. Mae Beavers, Rep. Terri Weaver, would ban abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy. Nearly 99 percent of abortions occur before 21 weeks of pregnancy, but when abortions are needed later in pregnancy, it’s often in very complex circumstances — the kind of situations where a woman and her doctor need every medical option available. 6-week abortion ban SB 244/HB 108 (click on bill number for latest status), sponsored by Sen. Mae Beavers, Rep. James Van Huss, in effect, would ban abortion at six weeks of pregnancy by banning abortion if a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Ultrasound exams can routinely detect fetal heartbeats at six weeks of pregnancy. Open-ended abortion ban SB 1180/HB 1189 (click on bill number for latest status), sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley, Rep. Matthew Hill, would change the definition of “viability” of a fetus in contradiction to current medical understanding, in effect, reducing the number of weeks at which a woman can legally have an abortion. The bill would also define a “medical emergency” more narrowly than current law and prohibit an abortion unless the strict new definition of “medical emergency” is met. Want to stop these bills from becoming law? Contact the the legislators on the House Health Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee by clicking on their names for phone and email information and tell them you oppose any efforts to restrict a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion.