Tennessee Pol: Just Because Bill Would Let Us Kill Women For Having Abortions Doesn't Mean We *Would!*

[erronis]

https://www.wonkette.com/p/tennessee-pol-just-because-bill-would
Robyn Pennacchia

Last week, Tennessee state House Rep. Jody Barrett did what many likely thought was impossible -- he advocated for an anti-abortion bill so obviously repugnant that even other Tennessee Republicans wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot-pole.

Abortion is already illegal in the state, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or lethal fetal abnormalities, meaning that these are people who are totally fine with forcing a 12-year-old rape victim to give birth to her father's baby, even if that baby will not survive outside of the womb because its brain is outside of its head. That is what passes for a good time, as far as Tennessee Republicans are concerned. But Barrett's bill, which would have classified abortion as criminal homicide, a crime punishable by death in the state, went a little too even far for them, as not even one single member of the subcommittee was willing to support it or speak in its favor.

. . .

Rep. Barrett has since complained that the bill did not pass because it was unfairly characterized as a "death penalty for abortions" bill, just because it would have allowed abortion patients to be sentenced to death.

Via Nashville Banner:

"The fear tactic of calling it a death penalty bill was just as effective at scaring actual pro-life people as it was the others," Barrett said, adding that it was an "insulting" characterization of his bill. Barrett believes that whether the bill could have resulted in execution was irrelevant because it was not likely that it would.

"There's only one female on death row in Tennessee, and she's been there since 1996," Barrett said. "We're not going to execute women. We don't have the stomach for it."

Sure! Tennessee will execute a likely innocent man and refuse to allow him to have his DNA tested against crime scene evidence, but a lady? Never! Except in the case of the aforementioned Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row. Pike is currently suing to stop her own execution on the (not wrong) grounds that the state's method of lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment due to a medical condition she suffers from. The state recently switched from a three-drug cocktail to a single dose of pentobarbital, which is known to cause a "flash pulmonary edema, described as sudden frothy fluid in the lungs," but because Pike suffers from a clotting disorder, it would cause her lungs to fill with a "bloody frothy fluid."

. . .

During a press conference on Thursday, Republican Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland) explained that "We don't punish mothers here in this state. We've been very clear about that. We did away with abortion by saying, look, a doctor could get arrested for killing a baby, a doctor could lose their license, a doctor could be sued."

"So we try very hard to make it clear we're against abortion, but we're for families. We're for children, and we're for these mothers that are going through an extraordinarily difficult time, so that they have the resources that they can be supported," he added.

No, they're not.

. . .

[2naSalit]

1. Sure, Jan.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

2. "We're not going to execute women. We don't have the stomach for it."

Jody Barrett has the stomach for it