Brian Harris, who helped usher in abortion ban as president of Tennessee Right to Life, has died

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Brian Harris, whose decades as leader and lobbyist for the anti-abortion group Tennessee Right to Life were instrumental in ushering in the state’s 2022 near-total abortion ban, died Saturday at his home in South Carolina after an extended illness. He was 57.

Harris served as president of Tennessee Right to Life for 23 years after leaving behind the aspiring musician career that first brought him from Indiana to Tennessee and taking over a dormant Nashville chapter of the organization in 1992. Harris went on to transform Tennessee Right to Life into a powerful statewide political force whose candidate endorsements and criticisms could spell electoral victory or defeat. 

Harris’ lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill ushered in a series of increasingly restrictive abortion laws beginning about a decade ago, at a time when Tennessee had far fewer limits on abortion access than neighboring Southern states.

That shifted under Harris’ leadership and as Republicans came to dominate the state legislature. Tennessee Right to Life is credited with turning out the vote for a successful constitutional amendment that stripped the right to an abortion from the Tennessee Constitution in 2014. Until then, Tennessee lawmakers were limited in the restrictions on abortion they could enact.

The legislature soon adopted more stringent abortion regulations, at times modeled on sample language submitted by Harris’ organization, which worked in tandem with a national network of conservative anti-abortion attorneys. 

Lobbying from Tennessee Right to Life resulted a 48-hour waiting period for abortions, ban on the use of telemedicine for abortion-inducing medications, the creation of a “choose life” license plate, and a requirement that doctors performing abortions obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals, which led to the closure of abortion facilities in Knoxville and Memphis.

Harris’ work with Tennessee Right to Life culminated in the state’s so-called “trigger law” in 2019 that conditionally banned abortions if the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision establishing a federal right to abortion. The Supreme Court subsequently did overturn Roe in 2022, and Tennessee’s trigger law took effect weeks later. A legal challenge to portions of the law remains ongoing.

Harris left Tennessee Right to Life in 2021, emailing a reporter at the time that he had moved to a small town outside Charleston, South Carolina. “There’s been a big turnover at TRL,” he wrote without detailing the reasons for his departure.

Harris is survived by two sisters, his grandfather, stepfather and nephews and nieces.