Image Credit: Aftyn Behn for TN HD51 / Facebook & Canva
The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
Following the filing of a bill to protect the unborn by Representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood-District 61), Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville-District 51) has filed a bill of her own which is in complete opposition to Bulso’s.
Behn’s bill, named the “Reproductive Freedom Act” would amend fourteen Titles in Tennessee Code, overturning recent laws that Republican lawmakers have passed restricting abortion.
Bulso’s bill, entitled the “Unborn Child Protection Act of 2025” would reaffirm that human life begins at fertilization, and that the unborn are entitled to “the full and equal protection of the laws that prohibit violence against any other person.”
Based on already existing federal statute that bans the mailing of or receiving of “abortion pills” through the mail, Bulso’s bill would enact civil liabilities of up to $5,000,000 for manufacturers, distributors, sellers or resellers of “abortion-inducing” drugs that are mailed or otherwise brought into the state. Delivering or mailing of such drugs into the state is already criminally illegal.
When speaking of the bill to the Nashville Banner earlier this week, Bulso stated that while it is hard to put an economic value on the loss of an unborn child, he felt that $5,000,000 was a “reasonable amount.”
Aimed at holding distributors “strictly liable” for putting an end to a pregnancy, the bill aims to deter the delivery of drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol into Tennessee, while providing an exception for those prescribed medication for other purposes.
Misoprostol is sometimes given as a preventative for patients at risk of developing stomach ulcers, while mifepristone can be used to control high blood sugar in people with Cushing’s syndrome, or treat certain types of brain tumors, endometriosis, or fibroids.
Abortion activists say that the language used in Bulso’s bill could be used in the future to charge women who seek abortions with criminal offenses.
CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi Ashley Coffield has said that Bulso’s proposed legislation appears to be a “personhood bill” which she called “a worst-case scenario.”
Bulso has noted that the state’s wrongful death statute, which his bill cites, already includes “an unborn child at any stage of gestation in utero” in the definition of “person” and so denies that his bill is a personhood bill. In addition, he has reiterated that it pertains to civil tort cases, and not criminal actions.
Behn’s bill states that every person has a fundamental right, not only to contraception, but also abortion. In dueling language, as compared to Bulso’s bill, Behn’s says instead that a “fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights” in Tennessee.
With Republicans holding the majority in the state legislature, Behn’s bill has no chance of being passed, and is also inconsistent with both the state’s constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Of particular note, Behn’s bill defines abortion as “the use of an instrument, medicine, drug, or another substance or device with intent to terminate the pregnancy of a person known to be pregnant with intent other than to increase the probability of a live birth, to preserve the life or health of the child after live birth, or to remove a dead fetus.”
Here we see the primary conflict between those who value the life of the unborn, and those who do not.
To define abortion as the delivery of a live child or the removal of a dead one is to make abortion something it is not, and never has been.
To conservatives, abortion means only one thing: the willful ending of a life in the womb. But to those on the left, it also means the delivery of a live child and D&C procedures that may be medically necessary after a child has died in utero.
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
4 Responses
This is very rich coming from a woman who claims to being a lesbian. Romans 1:26,27 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. She has a total disregard for human life. The taking of an unborn born human being. Isaiah 59:7 7 Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. They pursue evil schemes;
acts of violence mark their ways. Psalms 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Matthew 18:6 6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
She’s just another tool of her father satan.
I don’t understand how people are so callous about children? I remember as a kid in the 70’s when abortion was ramping up and how in my gut I KNEW that it was wrong. I knew in my heart and soul that it was wrong.
It amazes me how so many are willing to sacrifice unborn children simply because they are a nuisance to them. There are many people who would happily adopt those same children if they were born.
When you have to tell someone to keep something important in the backseat so you don’t forget your child who is back there, it shows how uncaring many parents are about this.
I would love to see a law that states basically that any woman who wishes to abort their child needs to talk to couples who can’t have kids and allow them to adopt the baby when it is born. As well as allow the potential parents to cover her for pre and post pregnancy issues. NOT SELL their baby, that would create
baby mills more than likely but just allow for insurance of the adopting couple to cover the woman who is pregnant for about a year. Not being a politician or lawyer, I am not sure how this would be drafted but I think it would be a good thing to do.
As horrible as Aftyn Behn’s bill is….why would it even see the light of day in any Tennessee Legislative committee? Is it to early in the process to bury this bill? Unless it is the GOP lead legislature that is willing to allow this hate filled woman with enough rope to drown her politically? We hear all the time that a good bill has been ‘sent to summer study’ or effectively being railroaded and DOA…..why wouldn’t the leadership just go ahead and end this bill? Obviously, she’s in a leftist, Demoncrat, baby hating district and she has no self-shame.
Lucifer’s vile evil dimmercraps.