Tennessee recently proposed a concerning bill, HB570, which essentially redefines “personhood.” It makes it so that women seeking an abortion could be facing homicide charges, and in the worst-case scenarios, the death penalty. It’s safe to say that many women are alarmed by this bill and are speaking out against it. This is exactly what one Tennessee woman does when she finds a Pro-Life group in Tennessee praying for the bill. She decides to share her personal story, but it doesn’t get the great overall reaction she expected.
Allie (@.allie.phillips) walked by an anti-abortion group while a committee was proposing HB570. She heard a leader stating before everyone in the room, “We’re gonna pray that God will move the hearts of these people that have told us they will be advocates for the unborn. Amen.” Allie waits for them to finish praying, and then she speaks up loudly from the back of the room,“Can I have a prayer request, please?” Everybody in the room turns to look at her as they instruct her to speak. She asks, “Can we pray for the mothers as well… or just the babies? Because I didn’t hear anything about the mothers in the prayer.”
Allie explains to the entire room, whose ears are all on her, that she had to “flee the state in 2023 to get access to an abortion.” She goes on to say, “I know that word might be triggering for some people but I was 20 weeks pregnant for a planned for and wanted pregnancy.” Allie tells the mostly silent room that she found out that her “daughter was not compatible with life” at an anatomy scan. Her doctor instructed her to seek an abortion because any other way would be “putting her health and life at risk.” Her doctor told her there were no options for her in Tennessee, where abortion laws are strict.
Allie tries to appeal to the room by explaining that her daughter would have been born as a stillborn. She states, “I would have to watch my daughter suffocate and die after birth.” Allie ended up flying to New York City for her abortion, and her husband wasn’t even permitted to be with her during the process. As Allie is telling her story, a man in the room interrupts her. He tries to say that this isn’t really a prayer request, but Allie states she wants to finish her story. Various male leaders in the room talk down to her and try to stop her from sharing the rest of her story. Allie states loudly, “I do not appreciate men talking over me” as she tries to continue her story.
In a shocking turn, Allie tells the men surrounding her that this is a room of people who “probably wish I was dead right now.” One of the men bafflingly steps in and says, “No, we just wish you wouldn’t kill somebody else.” Allie practically has to yell over the men surrounding her as she continues. She says she arrived at the New York clinic and “found out my daughter was already dead.” Men standing around her, with their arms crossed, shame her for continuing and try to get her to stop. She asks them, “Do you make it a habit of talking over women when they’re talking about a traumatic story?”
Allie is finally able to finish her story with major interruptions from the men around her. She says that without her family by her side, she had to go through with the abortion. It was either that or risk sepsis and die. She explains to the room, “That is an abortion because an abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy.” One of the men tries to tell her that it wasn’t an abortion because her child was already dead. She says, “Thank you for that. It was an abortion. Would you like to look at my medical paperwork?”
Allie questions why these men and women are gathered around and advocating for this. All they can give her is that they want “babies to live” and keep telling her she’s “advocating for abortion.” Allie tries to tell them, “I’m advocating for women to have a right to choose what happens to their bodies.” She asks the men, “Why are we attacking the victims?”
One commenter stated on Allie’s video, “It was a story like yours that made me understand and change my mind many years ago. Keep sharing, someone is going to hear you and evolve.” Another commenter shared, “I left TN to protect myself and my daughters. I’ll never move back, it’s sad.” Since that committee meeting, HB570 was actually shot down by the Tennessee legislature. It’s people like Allie who use words to make all the difference.
