A Tennessee House panel has advanced a bill that would make it illegal for an adult to help a minor travel out of state for an abortion without parental consent.
If enacted, the bill would prohibit the recruiting, harboring, or transporting of a pregnant minor by an adult without consent from the minor’s parents or guardians. This could include providing the minor with any assistance, from information on how to get the abortion to physically transporting the minor.
“This bill is simply a parental rights bill,” said Rep. Jason Zachary, who is the bill’s sponsor. The bill would also protect child victims of sexual abuse from forced abortions and further sexual abuse at the hands of their abuser.
Planned Parenthood was recently caught on camera by Project Veritas (PV), showing its willingness to assist an undercover investigator posing as a man attempting to bring a 13-year-old girl across state lines to undergo an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. The PV undercover investigation took place in Missouri, where the state law says 13-year-olds can never consent to sex or abortions. Planned Parenthood has a history of assisting sexual abusers.
However, Rep. John Ray Clemmons, who opposed the Tennessee bill, noted, “In some situations, the sole parent or legal guardian may be a rapist. So my concern here is if a child wants to get advice, wants to get assistance in any way… they first have to go find a lawyer, or go into a court alone to petition the court for help.”
Yet, obtaining a judicial bypass from a judge is exactly what Planned Parenthood advises children to do in order to obtain an abortion without parental consent, even — as is the case in the PV investigation — a 13-year-old whom Missouri law says is too young to consent to sex. Instead of helping a young sexual assault victim, Planned Parenthood showed it is willing to help her potential abuser traffic her across state lines for an abortion using judicial bypass.
Anyone convicted under the Tennessee bill, should it be enacted, would face a Class C felony charge, which carries up to a 15-year prison sentence and up to $10,000 in fines.
The bill is similar to a law enacted last year in Idaho, which is currently blocked following a legal challenge by pro-abortion activists. Currently, preborn children are protected from abortion in Tennessee, except in cases in which the mother’s life is considered to be at risk — though induced abortion, the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child, is not medically necessary.
