Tennessee Abortion Ban: Strict Rules Every Resident Should Know

Tennessee bans abortion at every stage of pregnancy. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-15-213, performing or attempting an abortion is a Class C felony, and the only exception covers a physician who acts to prevent the pregnant woman’s death or a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.

There is no exception for rape or incest. The pregnant woman cannot be prosecuted. The ban took effect on August 25, 2022, and the Tennessee legislature has amended the medical exception twice, in 2023 and 2025.

What the Human Life Protection Act Covers

The Human Life Protection Act was passed in 2019 (Public Chapter 351) as a trigger law, meaning it was written to take effect only if Roe v. Wade was overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs on June 24, 2022. The ban became enforceable on August 25, 2022, thirty days after the Tennessee attorney general notified the Code Commission.

How the law defines abortion

Section 39-15-213(a) defines abortion as using any instrument, medicine, drug, substance, or device to end the pregnancy of a woman known to be pregnant. That covers surgical procedures and medication abortion.

The definition leaves out five things: acts meant to increase the chance of a live birth, acts meant to preserve the life or health of the child after birth, treatment of an ectopic pregnancy, treatment of a molar pregnancy, and removal of a dead fetus. The ectopic and molar carve-outs were added by the 2023 amendment (2023 Tenn. Acts, ch. 313), which took effect April 28, 2023.

Rules the ban replaced

While the ban is in effect, subsection (f) supersedes the older gestational-age and heartbeat statutes at §§ 39-15-211, -212, -214, -215, -216, -217 and -218. Section 39-15-202, the informed-consent and waiting-period law, is not on that list.

The Medical Exception: What a Physician Must Show

A physician does not commit an offense if every requirement in § 39-15-213(c) is met. The statute heading still calls this an “affirmative defense,” a leftover from the 2019 version that required doctors to prove the exception by a preponderance of the evidence.

Requirement	What the statute says
Who performs it	A licensed physician
Where	A licensed hospital or ambulatory surgical treatment center
Why	In reasonable medical judgment, necessary to prevent the woman’s death or a serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function
How	By the method that gives the unborn child the best chance to survive, unless that method adds greater risk of death or impairment to the woman

Four-step checklist graphic of the requirements for Tennessee's medical exception to the abortion ban

Conditions the law lists

The 2025 amendment (2025 Tenn. Acts, ch. 217, effective April 17, 2025) defines “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” as a medically diagnosed condition that directly or indirectly causes that impairment. The definition says it may include the following, so the list is not exhaustive:

Previable preterm premature rupture of membranes
Inevitable abortion, meaning cervical dilation before viability
Severe preeclampsia
Mirror syndrome with fetal hydrops
Certain infections

These track the conditions a three-judge Chancery Court panel identified in its October 17, 2024 ruling in Blackmon v. State of Tennessee.

What does not qualify

The statute states that a condition related to the woman’s mental health does not count. A determination based on a claim that the woman will harm herself also does not qualify.

The law has no general exception for fetal anomalies and none for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. A bill that would have added a fatal fetal anomaly exception failed in 2025, according to reporting by the Tennessee Lookout.

Penalties Under Tennessee’s Abortion Laws

Criminal abortion is a Class C felony, which carries 3 to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 under Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-35-111(b)(3). The $50,000 figure that circulates online belongs to the abortion-pill mailing law, not the ban itself.

Offense	Who it targets	Penalty
Criminal abortion, § 39-15-213	The person performing or attempting the abortion	Class C felony: 3 to 15 years, fine up to $10,000
Providing abortion pills by mail, courier or delivery, § 63-6-1103	Manufacturers, suppliers, pharmacies, physicians and others who send them	Class E felony, fine up to $50,000
Abortion trafficking of a minor, § 39-15-201	Adults, not parents or guardians	Misdemeanor with a mandatory 11 months 29 days, plus civil liability

The woman is protected from prosecution

Section 39-15-213(e) says the woman on whom an abortion is performed or attempted is not subject to criminal conviction or penalty. The 2022 abortion-pill law (the Tennessee Abortion-Inducing Drug Risk Protocol Act, effective January 1, 2023) likewise applies to providers and suppliers, not patients. To see how enforcement differs in another state, read our guide to Indiana abortion laws.

Consequences for doctors beyond prison

A physician charged under the ban also risks discipline from the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners. The Board is a named defendant in the Blackmon lawsuit, and the October 2024 order blocked it from disciplining doctors who provide abortion care for the covered conditions.

The statute also treats accidental injury to the unborn child during medical treatment as outside the ban. Section 39-15-213(d) says treatment by a licensed physician that unintentionally injures or kills the unborn child is not a violation.

Bar-style chart comparing Tennessee penalties for criminal abortion, mailing abortion pills and abortion trafficking of a minor

Minors, Parental Consent and the “Abortion Trafficking” Law

Tennessee requires parental consent before an abortion for an unmarried minor. The consent and judicial bypass rules sit in Title 37, Chapter 10, Part 3 of the Tennessee Code. With abortion banned except in the narrow medical cases, those provisions matter only in the rare situation where the exception applies.

What § 39-15-201 prohibits

The 2024 law (2024 Tenn. Acts, ch. 1032, effective July 1, 2024) makes it a crime for an adult to recruit, harbor, or transport a pregnant unemancipated minor within Tennessee to conceal a criminal abortion from her parents, to procure one, or to obtain abortion pills for her. It reaches abortions procured out of state. The penalty is a misdemeanor with a mandatory sentence of 11 months and 29 days, and the adult can also face a civil wrongful-death suit. Penalties and enforcement are not the same everywhere; our breakdown of Kentucky abortion laws shows how another state handles them.

The law does not apply to a parent or legal guardian, or to someone holding the parent’s or guardian’s written, notarized consent. A mother who takes her own daughter out of state for a legal abortion is outside the statute.

The Sixth Circuit ruling

Two plaintiffs, attorney Rachel Welty and state Rep. Aftyn Behn, challenged only the “recruitment” provision. A federal district court granted them summary judgment and entered a permanent injunction on July 18, 2025.

On September 24, 2026, a divided Sixth Circuit panel affirmed in Welty v. Dunaway, Nos. 25-5738 and 25-5739. The majority held the recruitment provision unconstitutional as applied to Welty and Behn because it restricts speech based on content and viewpoint, and facially overbroad because it reaches protected speech about legal out-of-state abortions. Chief Judge Sutton dissented, reading the statute narrowly enough that it would not reach their counseling.

The panel did not decide the vagueness claim. Because the lawsuit targeted the recruitment provision, the harboring and transporting provisions were not before the court.

Waiting Period and Informed-Consent Rules

Tennessee’s 48-hour waiting period, found in Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-15-202, requires in-person information from the physician at least 48 hours before an abortion, except in a medical emergency. A federal district court struck it down in October 2020, and the full Sixth Circuit reinstated it on August 5, 2021 in Bristol Regional Women’s Center v. Slatery.

Because the ban allows abortion only under the medical exception, these requirements matter mainly for the narrow cases where an abortion is lawful. An emergency exception inside § 39-15-202 covers patients who cannot wait.

Abortion Pills, Telehealth and Out-of-State Care

Adults can lawfully travel to another state for an abortion, and no Tennessee statute makes it a crime for a pregnant adult to do so. Guttmacher Institute data show 10,020 Tennessee residents traveled out of state for an abortion in 2024, and another 5,840 obtained pills through telehealth appointments.

The Society for Family Planning’s #WeCount report estimates telehealth abortions for Tennessee residents rose from 230 in July 2023 to 750 in June 2025. Those pills come from providers in states with shield laws, which protect clinicians from out-of-state prosecution. Tennessee’s mailing law reaches providers, not patients.

Graphic of Tennessee with arrows showing out-of-state travel and telehealth abortion counts for Tennessee residents

The 2026 pill bill

In 2026 the General Assembly passed House Bill 5 and sent it to the governor, with a July 1, 2026 effective date. Under the Senate-amended text on the legislature’s calendar packet, a patient or wrongful-death beneficiary who proves by a preponderance of the evidence that an abortion-inducing drug sent by courier, delivery or mail caused a death would receive $1,000,000 in statutory damages from the sender. The bill exempts licensed pharmacists and physicians, as that section defines them.

Court Challenges to the Ban

The main state-court challenge is Blackmon v. State of Tennessee, filed September 11, 2023 in Davidson County Chancery Court. Plaintiffs argue the medical exception is too vague and violates the Tennessee Constitution. The American Medical Association joined the case.

Timeline of rulings

October 17, 2024: A three-judge panel temporarily blocked the ban for the listed pregnancy complications and denied the state’s motion to dismiss.
April 17, 2025: The 2025 amendment took effect, adding the listed conditions and excluding mental health conditions.
October 2025: The panel found the amendment did not significantly alter the case, allowed a challenge to the mental health exclusion, and permitted subpoenas to the Department of Health, according to the Tennessee Lookout.
April 21, 2026: The panel dismissed two claims and let the rest proceed. The attorney general appealed under a 2026 law allowing immediate appeals of sovereign immunity rulings, and the bench trial set for April 27 came off the docket, according to the Nashville Banner and The Tennessean.

The state also won a 2026 law repealing the state’s waiver of sovereign immunity for suits challenging a state statute, according to reporting by Stateline. The plaintiffs have said they expect to try the case once the appeal ends.

Vertical timeline of key court dates in the Tennessee abortion ban litigation from 2023 to 2026

What to Do in a Pregnancy Emergency

Go to a hospital emergency department if you have heavy bleeding, fever, or fluid leaking before viability. The exception lets physicians act in these situations when the condition meets the statute, and the list in § 39-15-213(a) covers many of them.

For information and out-of-state care, the National Abortion Federation Hotline (1-800-772-9100) connects patients with providers in states where abortion is legal. Planned Parenthood of Tennessee does not perform abortions in Tennessee, but it can provide referrals and help with travel logistics and funding.

A pregnant minor who needs help from an adult should know that a parent or guardian can lawfully assist her, while a non-parent adult who helps without notarized written parental consent risks prosecution under § 39-15-201 for conduct outside the recruitment provision the Sixth Circuit addressed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is abortion completely illegal in Tennessee?

Nearly. Abortion is a Class C felony for the person performing it, with an exception for a licensed physician acting in a licensed hospital or surgical center to prevent the woman’s death or serious, irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.

Can I be prosecuted for having an abortion in Tennessee?

No. Section 39-15-213(e) states that the woman on whom an abortion is performed or attempted is not subject to criminal conviction or penalty.

Can I travel to another state for an abortion?

Yes, if you are an adult. Tennessee has no law criminalizing a pregnant adult’s travel, though the trafficking law applies to non-parent adults who help a minor.

Are there exceptions for rape or incest?

No. The medical exception covers death and serious bodily impairment only, and the statute excludes mental health conditions.

Can abortion pills be mailed to me in Tennessee?

Providing pills by mail, courier or delivery is a Class E felony for the sender under § 63-6-1103. The law applies to providers and suppliers, not to patients.

Can an adult help a minor get an abortion in another state?

A parent or legal guardian can. A non-parent adult risks prosecution under § 39-15-201 for recruiting, harboring or transporting the minor, although the Sixth Circuit blocked enforcement of the recruitment provision as applied to the plaintiffs in Welty.