Allie Phillips, one of the parties suing Tennessee over its abortion ban, stands in her kitchen with her husband and daughter in February 2024. Phillips ran unsuccessfully for a legislative seat in 2024, based in part on her history of having to leave the state to obtain a medically necessary abortion, and will run again this year. (Photo by John Partipilo for Tennessee Viewpoint)
Three years after a miscarriage that left her with a severe, almost septic infection because a Tennessee hospital refused to give her an abortion, Katy Dulong couldn’t wait to tell her story at her trial, which was scheduled to begin Monday.
But this week, the state filed an appeal to a higher court under a new law passed by the Legislature in March, and the court stayed the trial indefinitely. It will be several months before the lower court can proceed with the case.
Dulong had complications that led to a miscarriage in November 2022, at 16 weeks of pregnancy, well before the fetus could survive. Under the state’s abortion ban, which had only been in effect for a few months, the hospital sent her home to miscarry on her own. When that didn’t happen, 10 days later, when she managed to convince doctors to agree to assist, a severe infection began to develop. The experience left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Tennessee bill expands prosecutors’ general authority to appeal court decisions
The delay in the court case gives the impression that the state is trying to silence her and the other plaintiffs, she said.
“It shocks me that there is someone in the world who would have such opposing views and think that our votes don’t matter,” Dulong said in an interview. “How are they taking away our voice now?”
In a motion to dismiss filed in February, the state argued that it couldn’t be sued by plaintiffs under a term called sovereign immunity, and in April, the Tennessee Legislature passed a law making it harder to sue the state on whether state or government actions are constitutional. Lawmakers passed another bill allowing the state to automatically appeal a sovereign immunity decision.
Nicolas Kabat, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who worked on the case with the plaintiffs, said the state had tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the case four times and said it was just another step to delay the trial. But he said recent rules adopted by the legislature allowing automatic filing of appeals during proceedings, on the eve of a hearing, make this a unique situation.
“There is nothing unusual about appealing an appealable ruling,” Phil Buehler, press secretary for Tennessee GOP Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, said in an email Thursday.
Similar lawsuits are pending or have already been settled in several states with bans, including: in Texas and Idaho, where state residents are challenging the law based on their personal experiences. Plaintiffs in Idaho won their case in April 2025 when a said the judge A near-total ban on abortion does not mean that the death of a pregnant patient must be imminent or “assured” in order to have an abortion. It is also investigating complaints that Texas hospitals allegedly failed to comply with a federal law requiring emergency room treatment of a patient requiring an abortion as part of stabilizing care.
Women with earnest pregnancy complications are suing over state abortion bans
Allie Phillips, lead plaintiff in Tennessee, joined several other women sue the state in September 2023, maintaining that the abortion ban threatened their health and life while they were pregnant. They asked the state to clarify the law so that when making decisions about abortion, health, and not only the direct threat to the life of the pregnant patient, is taken into account. Lawyers say the way the law is written is too vague to allow for such exceptions.
Phillips and Nicole Blackmon, another plaintiff, had fetuses with abnormalities related to the development of vital organs. Blackmon couldn’t afford to travel out of state for an abortion and eventually had to stop working because the pregnancy was taking a toll on her health. She gave birth to a stillborn child in the seventh month of pregnancy. Phillips raised enough money to exploit abortion services in New York, but only to find when she got there, she found that the fetus had already died.
After the court granted a transient block on the pregnancy complications law, the state passed several laws affecting the case. The first bill to clarify the state’s health exception for abortion was passed in April 2025 but did not solve the problem, Kabat said. The language still wasn’t clear enough, so the court agreed and allowed the lawsuit to proceed.
Kabat said the legal team will continue efforts to clarify Tennessee law so that stories like Dulong’s don’t happen to other people.
“No matter how long it takes, we will bring this to trial, we will make these stories heard and we will demand accountability from the state,” Kabat said.
Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at: kmoseley@stateline.org.
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