Tennessee lawmakers are tackling IVF, contraception access: Here's the latest on the bills

Yahoo

11-03-2025

After voting down bill last year to protect access to fertility care and contraceptives amid national tension around in-vitro fertilization, GOP-led legislation in Tennessee to do just that moved forward with bipartisan support Tuesday.
Legal implications of Tennessee's abortion ban on continued access to contraception and IVF care arose following a controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling last year that offered frozen embryos created through in-vitro fertilization the same rights as fully-developed children. Activists on both sides of the issue have expressed interest in tightening or loosening restrictions on IVF and contraceptive access.
Now, lawmakers are moving to explicitly clarify that abortion laws do not apply to contraception and IVF. The Fertility Treatment and Contraceptive Protection Act passed a first House committee on Tuesday, and is set to be heard in the Senate on Wednesday. It clarifies that nothing in state law prohibits access to fertility treatments or contraception, and individuals have a right to engage in both.
Republicans voted down similar legislation seeking to codify access to contraception last year, saying at the time it was unnecessary to codify protections because contraceptives are already legal in Tennessee.
While there are several Democratic-led bills this year seeking to protect access to fertility treatments and contraception care, the only proposal moving forward in the House is sponsored by Republican women: Rep. Iris Rudder, R-Winchester, and Sen. Becky Massey, R-Knoxville.
Separately, another Republican-led measure seeking to further regulate fertility care in Tennessee was delayed until next week. Sponsor Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, said his legislation is aimed at preventing situations that led to the Alabama court ruling.
'There is no desire in my heart or in this legislation to prohibit IVF,' Williams said Tuesday. 'My concern is that without state guidance and licensure what happened in Alabama might happen in Tennessee where the courts decide and interpret statutes based on courts and not based on their legislative bodies.'
House Bill 945 would propose a model agreement for patients and providers, suggesting – though not requiring – bans on certain genetic testing. Williams said he feels it's inappropriate to do 'the vast majority of genetic testing,' and he wants the legislature to opine on what types of genetic testing are appropriate.
The model agreement would also suggest – but also not require – limits on the number of embryos that could be frozen at one time based on the number of children desired by the couple.
'If we were to say that we think we want two children, then the model agreement opines that at no one time could my wife and I have eight embryos frozen in storage at a time,' Williams said.
But IVF physicians don't feel that limitation is wise, said Dr. George Hill, medical director of the Nashville Fertility Center.
'Human reproduction is very inefficient to begin with,' Hill said. 'Limiting patients on the number of eggs that you inseminate really, really hurts you at the end, when you're trying to get that normal embryo that's going to give them the best chance for a successful pregnancy. Out of those 20 eggs, women wind up with about two or three normal embryos.'
The bill would also create a state licensure and inspection process for cryogenic storage facilities housing frozen embryos created through IVF, and a state licensure process for in-vitro fertilization services based on federal guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rep. Sabi 'Doc' Kumar, R-Springfield, questioned the fine line the state would need to draw on embryo disposal and storage regulation.
In 2022, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti issued an opinion saying disposing of unused IVF embryos does not constitute a criminal abortion under state law because the embryo is not inside a woman's body at the time of disposal.
'It's a difficult dilemma,' Kumar said. 'We have claims of personhood for these embryos as well as legal concerns that these are persons and we can't really destroy them. Of course, they can be implanted in another person. They can be donated… On the one hand, legal institutions are saying that these are persons. On the other, we are saying that if we destroy them, that's not abortion.'
A separate Democratic-led bill seeking similar protections was delayed by the chair to next week.
More than two years have passed since Tennessee's abortion ban went into effect following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. Tennessee law bans abortion from the moment of fertilization onward, except in two specific circumstances of medical complication. There is no exception for rape or incest.
Lawmakers gave bipartisan first approval to a measure that could offer physicians some limited legal protection in medical decisionmaking around terminating pregnancies that could cause 'serious and substantial irreversible impairment' to the mother.
As the law is currently written, physicians who perform an abortion on a woman in a medical emergency can be charged with a Class C felony and forced to go to court to defend their medical decisionmaking, though the law provides an affirmative defense if the doctor can prove the procedure was medically necessary.
Last year, a panel of judges ruled physicians cannot be punished for providing abortions in life-threatening emergency scenarios.
House Bill 990 would list certain conditions that could cause 'serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of major bodily function,' including: pre-viable, pre-term, premature rupture of membranes, inevitable abortion, severe preeclampsia, mirror syndrome associated with fetal hydrops, or infection that can result in uterine rupture or loss of fertility.
'These aren't new exceptions, as the Human Life Protection Act should cover these conditions, however, we want to provide more clarity,' bill sponsor Rep. Bryan Terry, R-Murfreesboro, said. 'Right now since the Human Life Protection Act doesn't have this clarity in there… that's one thing [doctors] have to think about before they take that step.'
House Minority Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, said the vagueness in current law has put physicians in an impossible situation.
'The law ... has created a lot of issues with medical care providers being forced to make legal judgments rather than medical judgments,' Clemmons said.
Separately, a bill by Rep. Gabby Salinas, D-Memphis, seeking to create exceptions for pregnancies by rape and incest was taken off notice by the committee chair.
Republicans voted down an aspirational bill that sought to restore full access to abortion, protect health care providers from prosecution and ensure patients have access to contraception and fertility care.
The Reproductive Freedom Act would serve as 'a guiding vision of what we are fighting for," sponsor Rep. Aftyn Behn, D-Nashville, said.
'This bill is about more than abortion,' Behn said. 'It's about bodily autonomy, economic freedom, and the right to make health care decisions without politicians standing in the way.'
It failed in a party line vote of 2 to 6.
Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee bill to protect IVF, contraception access moves forward