Emergency Medical Exceptions to Tennessee’s Abortion Ban
This case challenged Tennessee’s abortion ban restrictions for pregnant patients with emergency medical conditions.
Case update: A ruling in this case on October 17, 2024 temporarily blocked Tennessee’s abortion ban, allowing doctors to treat patients facing dangerous pregnancy complications. Read more.
SummarySummary
On September 11, 2023, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed this lawsuit challenging the application of Tennessee’s criminal abortion ban to pregnant patients with emergent medical conditions. The case was brought on behalf of five plaintiffs: two Tennessee women denied medically necessary abortion care who faced severe and dangerous pregnancy complications, and two Tennessee physicians who have been prevented from offering their patients the medically indicated treatment during obstetrical emergencies.
(Four additional women denied abortion care and the American Medical Association joined the case by March 2025, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to nine.)
The lawsuit was filed simultaneously with challenges to similar laws banning abortion in Idaho and Oklahoma.
About the caseAbout the case
Tennessee’s criminal abortion ban first went into effect on August 25, 2022, just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the right to abortion under the federal constitution. When enacted, the total ban did not allow for any exceptions. Instead, it noted only that physicians would have an affirmative defense—with the defendant bearing the burden of proof—if they could establish that they performed an abortion that was necessary to avoid the death of the pregnant person or serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.
In April 2023, the Tennessee legislature replaced the ban’s affirmative defense provision with the Medical Condition Exception, which created an exception to the ban if a physician determines “using reasonable medical judgment, based upon the facts known to the physician at the time,” that abortion is necessary “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” It also revised the definition of criminal abortion to allow Tennessee physicians to terminate ectopic or molar pregnancies.
The Center’s lawsuit argues that the Medical Condition Exception is too narrow and unclear for physicians to provide life-saving care without fear of criminal liability. The lawsuit also seeks to clarify that the Exception allows physicians to provide abortion care in cases of fatal fetal diagnoses.
Even before imposing its strict abortion ban, Tennessee had a poor track record on maternal mortality, particularly for persons of color. Now, after enacting one of the toughest bans in the country, the situation can only get worse because Tennessee’s doctors are afraid of providing their patients with the full range of care that they need.
Linda Goldstein, CRR Senior Counsel
The Center’s lawsuit asks the state court to clarify the Medical Condition Exception by issuing a declaration about when physicians can legally provide abortion care in Tennessee.
To this end, the case asks the court to hold that physicians can provide care to a pregnant patient where the physician determines that abortion is within the standard of care to treat the patient’s high-risk or complicated pregnancy, including situations where the physician determines that the pregnant person has:
- A preexisting or underlying physical or mental health condition that cannot effectively be treated during pregnancy, is exacerbated by pregnancy, requires recurrent invasive intervention, or otherwise makes continuing the pregnancy unsafe for the pregnant person;
- A physical or mental health condition caused by pregnancy or a complication of pregnancy that poses a risk of infection, bleeding, or organ damage, or otherwise makes continuing the pregnancy unsafe for the pregnant person; or
- A lethal fetal diagnosis, regardless of whether the fetal diagnosis increases the pregnant patient’s health risks of continuing the pregnancy and giving birth.
The Center’s lawsuit argues that the abortion ban, as applied to pregnant persons with emergent medical conditions, violates Article I, § 8 and Article XI, § 8 of the Tennessee Constitution, which guarantee substantive due process for state deprivations of life, liberty or property, as well as equal protection under the law. Plaintiffs ask the Court to enjoin unconstitutional enforcement of the ban and to issue a declaration clarifying the Medical Condition Exception under Tennessee’s Declaratory Judgment Act.
Specifically, it argues that:
- The Exception unconstitutionally violates Patient Plaintiffs’ right to life and equal protection under law because it deprives pregnant Tennesseans (and only pregnant Tennesseans) of access to life-saving health care.
- The vagueness of the Exception unconstitutionally deprives Physician Plaintiffs of their rights to liberty and property because the Exception does not provide them with adequate notice of the prohibited conduct and invites arbitrary enforcement by state officials. The Physician Plaintiffs also sue on behalf of their patients who are denied life-saving care.
Related stories
Amicus Briefs Filed in Tennessee Abortion Case Emphasize Bans’ Harms to People of Color and Other Communities
Seeking Clarity on Emergency Exceptions to Texas’s Abortion Bans
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