Republican lawmakers in Tennessee have advanced a controversial abortion bill during a last-minute vote just after midnight Friday.
The passage of the so-called "heartbeat bill" came as a shock to Democrats, who had been assured that the measure would not be considered in the Senate.
State Rep. Mike Stewart, a Democrat, said that the measure, "one of the most extreme, anti-choice bills passed in the United States, was used as a trade-off by the House Republicans to get some budget concessions."
Such serious legislation should not be used as a "budget bargaining chip," Stewart told News Channel 5 Nashville.
The measure, one of the country's most restrictive abortion laws, would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which typically happens around six weeks into pregnancy.
Critics of the bill say that many women don't even know they're pregnant at that stage.
Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights have already filed a lawsuit to block the implementation of the measure.
"Lack of access to abortion care particularly harms those struggling financially and those who already face significant barriers to healthcare, including people of color, people with limited incomes, rural people, and young people. Politicians should not be deciding what is best for women and certainly not making reproductive health care decisions for them," the ACLU said in a statement. "As promised, we will see them in court."
The bill wasn't listed on the calendar, and the vote took place in a state capitol that's currently closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic _ a details that didn't go unnoticed by Alexis McGill Johnson, the acting president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
"It is a disgrace that in the face of a true public health crisis, Tennessee politicians wasted their time with this last-minute move to attack abortion access before closing up shop this session," Johnson said in a statement.
"We're going to do everything in our power to fight back and stand up for reproductive freedom," she added.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign the bill into law "in the coming days," according to his office.
"One of the most important things we can do to be pro-family is to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our state, and there is none more vulnerable than the unborn," the Republican governor tweeted.
