Little More Than Talk (About Abortion)

By Colson Potter for TruthWireNews

Politicians like to talk big. We all know the equation of a politician’s speech: one part hypocrisy, one part lie, and one part exaggeration that sometimes technically true. The politician who actually tries to live up to his word is a rare breed indeed. Conservative politicians in particular have a bad habit of saying all the right things and then doing the bare minimum to get by on re-election. The goal seems to be this: attach yourself to the cause just enough to say you did something, then go do what politicians do (money, corruption, and big government).

With all this in mind, it behooves us to inspect our politician’s claims. We should ask: ‘Are you really a champion? Or do you just dress up like one in election season?’ When it comes to abortion, this question bears all the more weight. Abortion is the question of how many dead kids the government will ignore (or fund, if you’re in Canada). So let’s ask State Senator Jack Johnson, my current state senator, what he thinks about it.

His campaign page touts his anti-abortion bona fides. “Jack will always fight for those who cannot fight for themselves. Every life is worth protecting, and he is 100% pro-life... Jack will never waver in this fight. He will always stand up for Tennessee’s most vulnerable, defending the unborn, supporting children in need, and ensuring every life is valued and protected.” These are big words, and they are politician words. Let’s weigh them against the evidence.

First, Johnson makes a big fuss about how he believes in protecting every life. The parts of the campaign website I excerpted, in fact, are focused on that point. In order to test the claim, let’s look at SB0527, a bill he voted for in both recorded votes (but which hasn’t yet passed the house). SB0527 would bar victims from suing pesticide manufacturer for fraudulent representations of a pesticide’s safety. As juries have found before, some pesticides are poison. Senator Johnson and his fellow ‘aye’ votes, apparently, don’t consider this risk significant. A few dead people, a few (more than a few) invalids, any number of persons at least minimally affected, this suffering matters not. “Every life” may be “valued and protected,” as per Johnson’s campaign website, but the business interests of pesticide manufacturers and their partners is evidently more “valued and protected.” You can know a man by where he puts his money, and you can know a politician by where he votes.

Johnson mentions two specific legislative acts as his pro-life credentials: an amendment and the HLPA. The amendment he can properly stake some claim on. While not the sponsor, Johnson did co-sponsor the legislation proposing the amendment (though 19 other senators did as well, meaning that 21 out of Tennessee’s 33 senators were sponsors or co-sponsors for the bill. Johnson was not making a particularly risky move). So far so good, and giving the Tennessee legislature an explicit right to regulate abortion was a good move, even if back in 2011 Roe v. Wade still limited how much effect that abortion regulation could have. The amendment does not make abortion constitutionally prohibited, however, and so it must be considered, while good, far from perfect.

What about the rest of his record?

Johnson also touts the Human Life Protection Act, SB1257, a trigger law which went into effect when Roe v. Wade was struck down, making most abortions illegal. Here, Johnson deserves less credit still. Unlike the above amendment, he was not one of the sponsors, unlike 21 of the other Republicans (75% of the Republicans in the senate at the time, and about 2/3rds of the senate overall). The wording on his campaign website is wise to be allusive, rather than straightforward; Tennessee did enact the law, but Johnson had less than most of his colleagues to do with it (and there’s not much leadership in voting for a bill 2/3rds of the senate has expressed full support for).

Since the 111th General Assembly (2019-2020) and including that session (with the HLPA), 30* bills categorized as ‘abortion’ bills by the legislature’s website have been offered by various Republicans. Of these, 29 were unobjectionable at worst, with several appearing quite worthwhile on their face. Of these, none after 2020 received a sponsorship (official endorsement and support) from Johnson. In 2019-2020’s General Assembly, he sponsored three abortion bills (not including the HLPA, because he didn’t sponsor that one). Two of those failed, despite Johnson having become Senate Majority Leader in that very assembly.

The third was a caption bill- meaning its originally submitted material amounts to essentially nothing (literally, it changed a judicial waiting period from 1 month to 2 months). The meat of the bill as passed came from an amendment  (I believe this is the correct one), not Sen. Johnson’s proposal. Does this mean he wasn’t at work? No. I’ve no direct knowledge of the politics behind the bill. Yet the absence is suggestive.

Senator Johnson’s record on abortion, when it’s laid out, is rather bare. He doesn’t seem to be for abortion, but he certainly doesn’t act the champion against it. A champion doesn’t content himself with occasional participation, not when he’s Senate Majority Leader, with the position to do much more than pass a bill somebody else added the meat to. Johnson seems, in fact, to do the bare minimum and a little less. He calls himself pro-life, he calls himself ‘conservative,’ but he joins the broad rank of politicians who lack the passion to actually conserve the lives of Tennessee’s infants.

 If you support what we do, please consider donating a gift in order to sustain free, independent, and TRULY CONSERVATIVE media that is focused on Middle Tennessee and BEYOND!

COME TO OUR EVENT FOR A GREAT EVENING OF BBQ AND GRASSROOTS PATRIOTISM!! CLICK TO GET TICKETS HERE!!