The leaders of Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood (TAPP), Planned Parenthood’s electioneering arm, held a press conference at the Tennessee Capitol saying that it has a plan to break the Republican supermajority in the state’s general assembly, thus making it easier to accomplish its pro-abortion work.
“Stopping the supermajority in Tennessee is not going to be easy,” TAPP CEO Ashley Coffield said during the press conference. “We have a plan this year to flip four seats and three after that so we break the supermajority before redistricting in 2030.”
“It’s going to take new tactics to restore balance in the state of Tennessee,” TAPP Board Member John Spragens said. “We have to flip some seats.”
TAPP did not respond to The Tennessee Star’s inquiry asking for details of the group’s plan, but one employee who spoke at the press conference suggested that it could involve a get-out-the-vote operation.
“Tennessee is not an anti-abortion state. We are a non-voting state,” TAPP Campaign Director Melisa Sauter said. “We were 50th in voter turnout in the 2022 election, but the good news is the only way we have to go from there is up.”
Planned Parenthood has had little success in Tennessee since the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade.
The court ruling enacted a trigger law banning nearly all abortions in the state, with the exception of the life of the mother being in jeopardy. In that case, a pregnant woman can abort her baby based on a “good faith medical judgment, based upon the facts known to the physician at the time.”
Data from the Guttmacher Institute shows that more than 10,000 women traveled out of Tennessee in 2023 after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which Coffield criticized in June on the second anniversary of that decision.
“Two years after the Dobbs decision allowed our state’s abortion ban to take effect Tennessee is in a state of crisis,” she reportedly said. “It is dangerous to be pregnant here.”
“We are living without a basic freedom and access to life-saving care that we never thought would go away, and people are afraid,” Coffield added. “The attacks on reproductive rights have not stopped.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
