— Advocates for Family, Life, and Religious Liberty
A Victory for Life in Tennessee: Amendment 1 Upheld
By a 3-0 opinion, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the vote in 2014 by the people of Tennessee to amend their state Constitution to strip out a “right to abortion” that our Tennessee Supreme Court found in our state Constitution back in 2000! (January 9, 2018) To our knowledge, it is the first-ever vote in the United States to overturn a “constitutional right” to abortion at the state level.
This victory began 17 years ago this month when the first resolution that would become this constitutional amendment was filed. It took 10 years to get it through the legislative process. And it’s been tied up in court since November 2014.
Here is one of our favorite quotes from the Court’s opinion: “Plaintiffs’ arguments amount to little more than a complaint that the campaigns in support of Amendment 1, operating within the framework established by state law, turned out to be more successful than the campaigns against Amendment 1.”
There were so many over the years who played an important part in this great victory for life and the rebuke its passage was to the Tennessee Supreme Court justices (all retired) who created a right that was never there in the first place. A special thanks, though, to the legislators who voted to put it on the ballot and to our friends at Tennessee Right to Life and those who served on the Amendment 1 campaign committee. And a special thanks to the Author of Life for His faithfulness in defending and vindicating the value of that which He created—human life.
We hope you will check out Friday’s commentary that will provide more insight into how the victory was won and on the opinion of the 6th Circuit.
