Allie Phillips
Allie Phillips and her husband Bryan were ecstatic when she learned that she was pregnant with a baby girl that they named Miley Rose.
Allie’s daughter by a previous relationship, Adalie, now 9, was so thrilled about her mom’s news that she couldn’t stop telling everyone she saw that she would be a big sister.
But tragically at Allie’s 20 week sonogram she was devastated to learn that her baby was suffering from a lethal condition -semilobar holoprosencephaly — and that Miley’s brain, heart and other organs had not developed. She could not live.
Allie and Bryan were heartbroken but also terrified. Allie’s life was in grave danger. Her much - wanted baby could die at any time in her womb putting her at risk for a deadly and quick- moving sepsis infection.
Only an abortion, could save her life.
But terrifyingly she discovered, that in her state of Tennessee, she would need to wait until the sepsis spread throughout her body and she was close to death before a doctor could legally intervene and terminate her pregnancy.
Allie fled to New York City just in time. A sonogram at the clinic revealed that Miley had already died inside her and her remains needed to be removed from Allie’s uterus immediately to save her life.
TENNESSEE TRIES TO SILENCE WOMEN ALMOST KILLED BY ITS ABORTION BAN
But as Allie grieved, she decided to fight back against Tennessee’s draconian abortion ban by leading a lawsuit along with the Center for Reproductive Rights and 8 other women plaintiffs.
All the women’s lives had been in jeopardy while pregnant thanks to the Tennessee abortion ban. Their lawsuit aimed to clarify medical exceptions from the ban so that doctors could go ahead and provide abortions in those cases without risking 15 years in prison!
The group filed the lawsuit in Sept 2023 arguing that pregnant Tennessee women like Allie were being deprived their right to equal protection to life saving healthcare under the state’s constitution.
A jury trial with testimony from all the plaintiffs was scheduled to start tomorrow on April 27th.
Then just days before Allie was ready to finally tell her story to a jury of her peers and ask them to agree that the Tennessee abortion ban must allow more and clearer medical exceptions for the state’s pregnant women - the trial was cancelled.
To delay the trial, possibly for months, Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, used a weeks old law HB1971, passed by the Republican -controlled Tennessee legislature, which prevents Tennesseans from suing over any state law that harms them!
“They want to silence the women in our case and to deny them their day in court. These women could have died without abortions. The state ( of Tennessee) wants to avoid accountability,” Nicolas Kabat, an attorney for the Center of Reproductive Rights”, told me.
“They ( Republican lawmakers) aren’t focused on the health and safety of Tennesseans. Women shouldn’t be forced to the brink of death before they get care. That’s not the way medicine is supposed to work.”
Tomorrow readers - Allie Phillips will give you her reaction to the trial’s cancellation here and tell you her story of perseverance and how she will keep fighting!
ALSO ALLIE is running as a Democrat to be a Representative in Tennessee’s state General Assembly, which includes a supermajority of Republicans right now. Here’s a link to her campaign page if you would like to support her.
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