LEGISLATURE: RINSE AND REPEAT

Fifty years ago this week, Tennessee legislators were discussing — go figure — abortion and capital punishment, two of the same topics that have been prominent among the issues debated in this year’s session.

But a few things have changed since 1973.

That year, a Republican governor signed a bill permitting abortions, which had been outlawed since 1883. And Democrats led the fight to reinstate capital punishment.

In 2023, no GOP legislator would say he or she was in favor of abortion, though earlier this year the legislature did approve a bill allowing the merest exceptions in the state’s near ban on the procedure. And no Democrat today would be on record in favor of capital punishment.

Of course, there are a few caveats. Then-Tennessee Gov. Winfield Dunn, the state’s first Republican chief executive in nearly 50 years, signed the abortion bill because it was about the most restrictive bill that could be passed at the time. Earlier that year, the U.S. Supreme Court had declared that abortion was legal in most circumstances, negating the state’s 90-year-old law forbidding them.

A Democrat, state Sen. Doug Henry, was one of the authors of the bill, but he was no fan of abortion, saying “unless we take some action these people [unborn children] will be killed indiscriminately.

“You have to understand that the U.S. Supreme Court declared open season [on unborn children],” he said. “This would put the shield of the State of Tennessee around them.”

No Democrat would take such a principled stand on abortion today.

The bill at the time permitted abortion on demand during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and after that only if the mother’s physical or mental health or that of the fetus would be damaged. It won out over a House version, which would have allowed an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy and after that only if a physician and the mother agree that she would be mentally or physically harmed by delivery.

In this year’s session, legislators passed a bill that would exempt ectopic and molar pregnancies from the criminal statute that went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned the court’s previous rulings on abortion. Exceptions for mental health, damage to the fetus, and for rape and incest — all of which had been proposed in one bill or another — did not make it to the final measure.

Though Democrats controlled the Tennessee Senate and

House 50 years ago, then-state Rep. Bill Carter, a Republican, of Hamilton County was the first member of the legislature to introduce a bill calling for capital punishment after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled the state’s previous law was invalid.

However, in what sounds quaint considering today’s hyperpartisanship in the legislature, Carter withdrew his bill in favor of one authored by — get this — a Democrat and a Republican. After the bill passed, the two submitted a letter to The Chattanooga Times, stating that after Carter removed his bill he “exhibited genuine concern and great teamwork … in favor of supporting our bill … and was most instrumental in the final passage of the bill.”

Imagine that kind of bipartisanship today.

The state had not executed a prisoner since 1960, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 had declared capital punishment, as then imposed, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. However, legal experts concluded the court had left the door open for constitutional capital punishment, and that’s what the Tennessee legislature was attempting.

As passed, an offender could be given the death penalty — then the electric chair, exclusively — for first degree murder if it involved killing a police officer or prison guard acting in the line of duty, killing a judge or elected public official, murder for hire, or first degree murder committed in connection with kidnapping, rape, armed robbery, arson, bombing, aircraft piracy or larceny.

Democrats pushed hard for the bill’s passage.

One, state Rep. Hugh Dixon, D-Carthage, followed a member who spoke against the death penalty by saying “that’s absolutely the worst speech I’ve ever heard. Capital punishment is a deterrent.” Another, state Rep. Cletus McWilliams, D-Williamson, said, “It’s time we should have compassion and mercy for the victims of crime.”

While the bill passed and was signed by Dunn, it didn’t stick. The state Supreme Court struck it down and struck down two more such bills before the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to reinstate capital punishment. Finally in 1977, the state enacted a new law that, with amendments, is still in use.

Which brings us to 2023, when a bill allowing a sentence of death to be carried out by electrocution if the lethal injection protocol is unable to be used was amended to add a firing squad as an acceptable method of execution. Fortunately, the bill was placed behind the budget, meaning it’s not likely to see the light of day this year, but it once again put the state in a rather dubious spotlight.

We may have come a long way in 50 years, but we still seem to be debating the same issues.