Just a week after the state’s GOP-heavy House voted to punish Memphis for removing statues that glorified the Confederacy, Tennessee’s mostly-Republican state Senate voted Monday to support the installation of a privately funded monument to abortion “victims” on state Capitol grounds.
The “Tennessee Monument to Unborn Children, In Memory of the Victims of Abortion: Babies, Women, and Men”was proposed by the same team who tried to make the Bible the state’s official book in 2016. The newly passed Senate bill makes one simple, but significant change to the mildly tweaked version that passed the House last week, 63-15.
The Senate version of the measure, which passed 23 to 3, would only "urge" the State Capitol Commission to "consider" placing the monument, whereas the House version mandates one. The legislation will now head back to the House for concurrence.
When introducing the bill in March, co-sponsor Rep. Bill Dunn went right where he shouldn’t have, and predictably, appallingly, compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust.
Currently, on the Capitol grounds, there’s a monument to the victims of slavery…
On this side, where the cedar trees are, there’s a monument to the victims of the Holocaust.
Both of these monuments that are already here recognize that atrocities occurred because human beings were treated as less than human. In both cases, the vulnerable and defenseless were subjected to the will of the powerful.
The taking of the life of a baby in the womb is related to this brand of inhumanity.
This, of course, wouldn’t be the first“monument to the unborn” to be built in the U.S.; it’s not even the first in Tennessee. Chattanooga locked up that dubious honor in 1994, when the “National Monument to the Unborn” was built on the site of what was once the city’s lone abortion clinic.
According to the group behind the Chattanooga monument, God answered local anti-choice prayers and gave both of the clinic operators terminal cancer.
...a handful of men began to pray on the Chattanooga Women’s Clinic (CWC) parking lot every Sunday morning. They specifically implored God to act by either saving or removing the people who worked at CWC. Almost immediately, clinic co-owner Sue Crawley contracted a fast-spreading cancer and was subsequently unable to return to work; she died soon thereafter.
Sidewalk counselors remained faithful and believers continued to pray. Some twenty-one months later, the other clinic co-owner, Fran Muzzoco, likewise contracted cancer and died abruptly.
Yeah. Okay then.
But back to Dunn’s false equivalencies.
(When) asked if he is comparing women who have voluntary abortions to Adolf Hitler or American slave traders, Dunn points out slavery and Jewish persecution were legal, as well, when they took place.
“I’m saying the common thread that goes through all three of those is that it was a time that society said some human beings are less human than others, that some human beings can be subjected to inhuman treatment for it,” Dunn adds.
Rather than plainly say, “No, I’m not comparing women who get abortions to Hitler and slave traders and owners,” Dunn focused on who really matters—and in all but one case, it was not the person who gets the abortion.
“While the baby can be seen as the obvious victim, this memorial will also be for other victims, the women coerced into abortion, the fathers who can’t protect their unborn child, the brothers and sisters who lose a sibling and the society as a whole who becomes coarsened because life is cheapened.”
There are no words.
Tennessee has some of the harshest abortion restrictions in the country; Nashville reporter Sam Stockard also points out that the Capitol commission is more likely to build a monument to fetuses than it is to remove a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The only bright spot? There was some public, and vocal opposition.
“What about a monument to the children that come into state custody that (Republicans) don’t help and that they send back to people who abuse them constantly. Maybe that’s where they need to go,” says state Rep. Sherry Jones, a Nashville Democrat.
Says Rep. Darren Jernigan, a Democrat from Old Hickory, “We could put an amendment on there to put a monument up for the children that die in schools. That would certainly be a friendly amendment.”
And Nashville Democratic Rep. Bo Mitchell chimes in [...]
“Maybe we’ll take care of the kids that are alive in our schools.”
At least one state senator voiced criticism too, though he could have left the “abortion is always trauma” rhetoric at home.
Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis) sharply criticized the idea, saying it was inappropriate for a woman visiting her legislators on a matter of business to be forced to walk past a place that might cause her to relive one of the most difficult decisions she's ever had to make.
Assuming the House passes the revised non-mandate bill, it will head to Governor Bill Haslam’s desk to await veto signature. Haslam hasn’t yet indicated which way he’ll go—but considering he’s openly against abortion and marriage equality, plus a card-carrying member of the NRA who campaigned on a platform that endorsed constitutional carry, optimism seems hard to muster.
Then again, he DID veto that “Bible as our state book” bill. He’s also a billionaire who’s term-limited and has nothing to lose.
So feel free to give him a nudge.