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Lawyer quits job to crisscross state translating Tennessee's bewildering abortion ban for doctors
Chloe Akers considers herself a grizzled criminal defense attorney. Until a few months ago, she didn't spend much time thinking about abortion — for all her 39 years, abortion was not a crime, so she'd never imagined having to defend someone accused of performing one.
That changed in June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Akers sat down in her law office and pulled up Tennessee's new criminal abortion statute.
She didn't read it through a political lens; it doesn't matter whether she likes a law — there are a lot of them she doesn't like. Instead, she read it like she would any other statute: What does it make illegal? How would it be enforced?
She was shocked. She read it maybe 10 times more. Surely, she was missing something.
Tennessee's law is one of the strictest in the country. It makes performing an abortion a Class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. There are no exceptions. This is the part that Akers has since found herself having to repeat, often eliciting raised eyebrows and deeply drawn breaths: Unlike many states' abortions bans, including the one in Texas, this law does not explicitly exempt abortions performed to save a mother's life.
That changed in June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Akers sat down in her law office and pulled up Tennessee's new criminal abortion statute.
She didn't read it through a political lens; it doesn't matter whether she likes a law — there are a lot of them she doesn't like. Instead, she read it like she would any other statute: What does it make illegal? How would it be enforced?
She was shocked. She read it maybe 10 times more. Surely, she was missing something.
Tennessee's law is one of the strictest in the country. It makes performing an abortion a Class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. There are no exceptions. This is the part that Akers has since found herself having to repeat, often eliciting raised eyebrows and deeply drawn breaths: Unlike many states' abortions bans, including the one in Texas, this law does not explicitly exempt abortions performed to save a mother's life.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lawyer-quits-job-crisscross-state-193511360.html
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