Editor’s notebook: Gushy Mother’s Day posts from Tennessee lawmakers don’t reflect reality

Hey, Mom! Hope you enjoyed those flowers. Too bad you can't eat them, cause Tennessee offers little support for mothers. (Photo: Getty Images)

Perhaps no American holiday is more sacrosanct than Mother’s Day, a fest that provides politicians an occasion on which to shower platitudes about the noble calling of motherhood. 

Tennessee lawmakers flooded social media Sunday posing with their mothers — Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Franklin Republican, posted a photo on X of him as a teen dancing with his mom, both beaming for the camera — and lauding their wives for being good mothers, as House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison did. 

I have no doubt that the men of Tennessee’s government love their mothers. Who doesn’t? Even Adolf Hitler was known to have a mutually adoring relationship with his. 

But the fulsome praise is a rich irony coming from Republican lawmakers who continually pass measures to make life harder for the state’s women and the children they bear.

The fondness vocalized by predominantly male legislators is prescient, given there’s the likelihood that Tennessee could experience a new baby boom in the next few years, as the 2023 enactment of the state’s ban on virtually all abortions: it’s a move that all but guarantees women with unwanted pregnancies will either be forced to leave the state in search of abortion care or bear a child they may not have the capability to properly care for. 

And by ‘women,’ I include teen and pre-teen girls who become pregnant. A new law, sponsored by Rep. Jason Zachary, prohibits anyone but parents from taking pregnant girls out of the state for abortions, cutting grandparents and other relatives out of the equation.

Let’s assume you are a joyous pregnant mom, delighted with the thought of having a child. You better hope you have a textbook perfect pregnancy, because if your fetus has abnormalities that threaten your own life, the state’s abortion ban has put physicians in a tough place.

Meanwhile, even a medication abortion could become harder to come by, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the merits of mifepristone, part of a two-drug regimen approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for early-term abortions. 

But let’s assume you are a joyous pregnant mom, delighted with the thought of having a child. You better hope your pregnancy is textbook, because God forbid your fetus has abnormalities that will cause your baby to die upon or shortly after birth, or worse still, has a condition that threatens your own life. 

Tennessee law provides only the narrowest of exceptions to the abortion ban for the life of the mother, which means physicians face the dilemma of deciding just how close a pregnant woman is to dying, and weigh the odds against being arrested and charged criminally for performing what could be deemed by a layman a medically unnecessary procedure. 

That, of course, assumes you can find an OBGYN to treat you. A 2023 report found that more than half of Tennessee’s rural hospitals no longer deliver babies, creating “maternity care deserts” across the state. In 2019, the March of Dimes reported Tennessee ranked 44th in the nation for access to prenatal care before the third trimester, along with higher than average rates of preterm births. 

As if that weren’t bad enough, Jamie McGee reported for the Lookout in June 2023 that states with abortion bans like Tennessee’s experienced a 10.5% decrease in applications for OBGYN residencies. 

The reason? Residents in obstetrics and gynecology perform an abortion as part of training; Tennessee’s criminal penalties are making medical students leery of practicing here. 

“Everyone is worried about it,” Tennessee Medical Association CEO Russ Miller said at the time. “It’s definitely something all of us are keeping an eye on.” 

Consider a different scenario: Let’s say a couple desperately wants to have children but has fertility problems. An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that classifies eggs fertilized through in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment similarly to children could have ramifications in Tennessee, as House members voted down a bill that would have made clear that the state’s abortion ban does not endanger fertility treatments or access to contraceptive care.  

Sorry to be Debbie Downer. Like many moms, you may have had a healthy baby that was wanted and planned for: congratulations! Do you have a good job with a stable income? You should make sure of that, because relying on the Tennessee government for any kind of aid is a dicey proposition. 

Tennessee’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a key anti-poverty program, is sitting on a whopping $717 million financial surplus rather than distributing the funds to the families for whom they are intended. If you are availing yourself of SNAP benefits, formerly called food stamps, be aware there have been habitual delays in distribution of those funds. 

Just after the Tennessee Department of Human Services introduced a new computer management system in June, more than 73,000 Tennesseans — most of whom are children — enrolled in the SNAP program lost access to food benefits. 

Thank God for public schools, where needy students can get a free lunch — or not. A measure introduced in Tennessee’s House and Senate by Rep. Kevin Raper of Cleveland and Sen. J. Adam Lowe of Calhoun, both Republicans, that would have provided free breakfasts and lunches to kids qualifying under the National School Lunch Act and Child Nutrition Act of 1966 failed in the House K-12 Subcommittee of Education Administration. 

Maybe it’s just as well it failed so nobody counts on free meals. If Gov. Bill Lee has more success next legislative session than in this one with his bid to create universal school vouchers, funds will stream out of public education to private schools. 

Cheer up, moms! Tennessee’s lawmakers appreciate you! That’s what they said on social media, after all. And as for those flowers you got? Well, you can’t eat them and they won’t help provide health care, but at least they’ll give you something pretty to look at while you figure out how to move to a state with more supportive policies.

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