Earlier this month, Tennessee State Representative Aftyn Behn visited Vanderbilt Law for a conversation on the post-Dobbs legal era. Co-hosted by If/When/How and ACS and funded by the George Barrett Social Justice Program, the conversation discussed the United States’ legal landscape following the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion and effectively allowing individual states to regulate access to the procedure. Behn explored the ruling’s impact on reproductive rights in Republican states, the role of attorneys in protecting reproductive freedoms, and strategies for raising awareness in the South.
Behn has represented Tennessee’s 51st House district since 2023. A Tennessee native and licensed social worker, she was drawn to legislative advocacy after beginning her career as a healthcare community organizer with the Tennessee Justice Center, where her roles included advocating for Medicaid expansion. She’s since become an organizer and member of numerous political and reproductive freedom organizations, including Indivisible and Healthy and Free Tennessee, coordinating grassroots efforts across Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Montana.
Speaking to students, Behn explained that legal challenges addressing reproductive freedom now center on state constitutional provisions, statutory interpretation, and administrative law rather than federal constitutional protections alone. In Tennessee, she noted, the state’s Human Life Protection Act bans abortion from the moment of fertilization and has prompted ongoing litigation over the scope of medical exceptions and physician liability. She also referenced ongoing litigation around the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act—which ensures public access to emergency services regardless of insurance and ability to pay—exploring whether federal emergency stabilization law preempts the state abortion bans.
“Reproductive rights are now primarily state constitutional rights,” she said. “Dobbs did not just overturn Roe; it narrowed how courts interpret liberty. In terms of post-Due Process, arguments must move beyond pro-era framing, and equal protection and liberty arguments must be rebuilt creatively.”
Access to reproductive healthcare increasingly sits at the intersection of several legal domains, including medicine, privacy, and technology, Behn highlighted. She pointed to her ongoing litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit—a lawsuit challenging a Tennessee law restricting assistance for minors seeking abortion care across state lines—as an example of how state-level cases can influence national precedent, particularly regarding the use of free speech to promote access to reproductive healthcare information.
“A future attorney should track the federal privacy versus state police powers, which are going to be issues du jour at least for the next few years,” she said. “Medication abortion sits at the intersection of FDA approval authority, state criminal statutes, telehealth licensing, and postal regulation. So the emerging issues within this would include shield laws in protective states and the Dormant Commerce Clause arguments.”
“Big surveillance and data governance are in the middle of this as well,” she noted. “Expect litigation involving subpoenas to tech companies and interstate data sharing—and the relevant frameworks include HIPAA limits, state privacy laws, and digital search warrant jurisprudence. Reproductive justice will be litigated through digital privacy, and Tennessee is absolutely in the middle of all of this.”
Behn explained that Republican lawmakers in Tennessee and across the country are pursuing fetal personhood legislation as part of their broader legal strategy to expand the criminality of reproductive care. She pointed to Tennessee’s reproductive health landscape to illustrate the physical health consequences of restrictive legislation, noting that the state continues to face one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. Behn characterized the current legal moment as one of “retrenchment.”
“The Dobbs decision formalized retrenchment,” she said. “Rights are narrowed or eliminated, the enforcement shifts to states, criminalization increases, surveillance expands, legal uncertainty chills access, and geographic inequality deepens. And that is where we are right now.” She added, “We are seeing a generational reordering of bodily autonomy doctrine, federalism, privacy, criminal law, administrative law, digital surveillance, and equal protection.”
Behn argued that, due to growing partisanship, abortion and cultural issues often dominate legislative attention, while economic concerns, such as Tennessee’s grocery tax, remain unresolved. “You are entering an era and a terrain of deep politicization,” she said to students.
She urged them to focus their energy on human rights legislation in Tennessee and the broader South, including by testifying on pending legislation. She emphasized that the legal and political developments in the state hold national significance and often serve as a testing ground for policies that are later implemented elsewhere. “As the South goes, so does the nation,” she said, quoting W.E.B. Du Bois.
Behn described her political career as rooted in lobbying, community organizing, and running electoral campaign strategies that translate grassroots momentum into legislative change. She initiated legislation challenging Tennessee’s grocery tax and is campaigning to amend the Tennessee State Constitution to include the Equal Rights Amendment. She encouraged students to take a long-term approach to legal advocacy, emphasizing the need to develop training across disciplines in order to address issues such as reproductive rights.
“Politics is local, but our struggle is global,” she concluded. “For those who want to get involved with reproduction, you’re going to have to know how to organize. You’re going to have to know how to lobby, and you’re going to have to know the law,” she said.