Opinion ID: 2103784
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Medical Emergency Exceptions

Text: Finally, it is clear that the medical emergency exceptions are not narrowly tailored to advance the State's interests in maternal health. As the Court of Appeals noted, these medical emergency exceptions are too narrow to pass constitutional muster even under the less exacting undue burden standard. Casey, 505 U.S. at 880, 112 S.Ct. at 2822. The statutes contain two emergency medical exceptions, Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-15-202(d)(3) and -202(g). Subsection 202(d)(3) is a narrow provision addressing the waiting period and states that the two-day waiting period will not apply when the attending physician determines that a waiting period would endanger the life of the pregnant woman. Subsection 202(g) provides an exception to the informed consent and physician-only requirements and the two-day waiting period requirement when necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman. We initially agree with Planned Parenthood and the Court of Appeals that both exceptions should be read to only cover circumstances where a woman's pregnancy is endangering her life. We decline to read the word life to mean life and health. If the legislature had intended these medical emergency exceptions to cover life and health it could have easily said so. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-15-201(c)(3) (medical emergency exception to prohibition against post-viability abortions if necessary to preserve the woman's life or health). It is well settled that when the words of a statute are plain, clear, and unambiguous, we merely look to the statute's plain language to interpret its meaning. E.g., Schering-Plough v. State Bd. of Equal., 999 S.W.2d 773, 775-76 (Tenn.1999). In our view, the legislature intended the medical emergency exceptions at issue to protect only the life, as opposed to the health, of the woman. As written, the medical emergency exceptions fail to pass constitutional muster. They impermissibly impinge upon a woman's fundamental procreational autonomy because they do not contain adequate provisions that will permit immediate abortions necessary to protect a woman's health. For this reason, they also fail to satisfy an undue burden analysis. See Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. at ___, 120 S.Ct. at 2613.