Precisely what good is conservative voters electing Republicans in a conservative state if they won’t actually stand up for conservative legislation?
That should be the question everyone in Tennessee is asking after the GOP-dominated legislature tabled a bill that would have treated abortion like murder, which it obviously is.
According to WKRN-TV in Nashville, an amendment to House Bill 570 was introduced by Tennessee State Rep. Jody Barrett, who wanted any harm done to a human being in the womb to be penalized in the same way as harm done to a human being outside of it.
“No child should be murdered in the womb,” Barrett said prior to the bill’s presentation in a Tennessee House subcommittee on Tuesday.
“One hundred percent of the kids that are babies that are terminated through abortion are victims, 100 percent, but I cannot say 100 percent of women who kill their babies through abortion are victims. It’s apples and oranges.”
The bill failed to make it out of subcommittee — and not just because of Democrats, because Republicans dominate the Tennessee House with a 75-24 supermajority.
🚨 Watch the moment House Bill 570, which would have abolished abortion in Tennessee, failed because zero Republicans on the Tennessee House Population Health Subcommittee had the courage to motion for the effort to be heard. pic.twitter.com/uZoOBhXuzT
— Foundation to Abolish Abortion (@AbolitionistFAA) March 10, 2026
John Rice-Cameron, the legislative liaison with the Foundation to Abolish Abortion, noted that the Population Health subcommittee that handled it was “stacked with some of the more liberal Republicans in the Tennessee House.”
“In order for that bill to be heard, we needed one legislator to make a motion, and then another one to second that motion,” he remarked.
Despite Christians across the Volunteer State pressing for the bill to be passed, “the Republicans on the subcommittee, not a single one of them had the courage or the conviction to make a motion to hear the bill — and as a result, the bill died right then and there.”
🚨 House Bill 570, which would have established equal protection of the laws for preborn babies in Tennessee, died today after Republicans refused to motion for the legislation to be heard. pic.twitter.com/W6BW7i5cuT
— Foundation to Abolish Abortion (@AbolitionistFAA) March 10, 2026
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee commented on the legislation when pressed by reporters, and his office said he was “concerned” by it.
“I’m a person who has long believed that protecting the rights of an unborn child — protecting the life of an unborn child — is crucial, and we’ve been very committed to making sure that happened in our state,” Lee said in early March. “I just believe this piece of legislation is the wrong way to do it.”
The death penalty for aborted children runs at a solid 100 percent. Even as Tennessee bans abortions assisted by third-party abortionists, KFF data show that over 700 “telehealth” abortions occur in the state each month — that is to say, abortions where drugs are sent to women by out-of-state doctors.
As The Tennessean noted, after the vote, supporters of the amendment shouted that there were “cowards and heretics everywhere!”
That’s bad enough when it’s Democrats who can be referred to in this manner. When it’s Republicans who can’t even be bothered to treat the unborn as human beings in a deep-red state, however, it’s gutlessness of the highest order.
But it’s not just voters that these spineless Republicans have to fear, as one anti-abortion activist told The Tennessean.
“These legislators will be held guilty before a holy God for not doing justice for these children,” Brian Gunter, a pastor with End Abortion Now, remarked.
“The members of the committee who did not motion for this to get a hearing today, they are going to, one day… stand before the Lord Jesus Christ the creator of Heaven and Earth with the blood of the children that are continuing to be murdered by abortion in this state on their hands.”
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