Every Dem in TN state Senate, 21 Dems in state House voted to jail women for outcomes

of pregnancy.

I had read about this awful bill, but I had not realized that Democrats were so much in favor of it. I am having trouble understanding why. If anyone says to me that's how you get elected in TN, I will scream so don't say it. We heard that too much for decades from the DLC and Third Way.

It's not a good thing to do that anywhere in any state.

The vote that was taken on March 6 of this year. This is the House vote, and I counted 21 Democrats who supported it.

March 6, 2014 House vote on SB 1391

Here is the Senate vote. Not as many Democrats, I see 7. But only Republicans voted against it.

Senate Vote on SB 1391 (Apr 7, 2014)

Salon has an article about this bill.

Tennessee just became the first state that will jail women for their pregnancy outcomes

Against the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups, Gov. Bill Haslam signed SB 1391

Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations — and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy — and signed the measure anyway.

Opponents of the new law share a concern that a lack of access to health care and treatment facilities will result in the disproportionate targeting and jailing of poor mothers and mothers of color, particularly in rural districts throughout the state.

Republican state Sen. Mike Bell, one of the seven Republicans in the state Senate to vote against the measure (every Democrat in the state Senate voted in favor), recently told Salon that this lack of access is a problem he thinks will hurt the women of his district and their families. “I represent a rural district,” he said. “There’s no treatment facility for these women there, and it would be a substantial drive for a woman caught in one of these situations to go to an approved treatment facility. Looking at the map of the state, there are several areas where this is going to be a problem.”

Only two of the state’s 177 addiction treatment facilities that provide on-site prenatal care allow older children to stay with their mothers while they are undergoing treatment. And only 19 of these facilities offer any addiction care specifically oriented toward pregnant women. Tennessee has also refused the Medicaid expansion, leaving many women without reliable access to basic medical or prenatal care, much less drug treatment.