A bill that seeks to erect a monument dedicated to unborn victims of abortion is currently working its way through the Tennessee state legislature.

The bill was passed by the Tennessee Senate and will now make its way to the House. If passed, it would create a monument to be erected on the grounds of the Tennessee State Capitol, inscribed with the words “Tennessee Monument to Unborn Children, In Memory of the Victims of Abortion: Babies, Women, and Men.”

Funding will not come from the taxpayers and is simply being listed as originating from “non-state sources.”

Both chambers of the state legislature have a Republican majority. The bill has already passed through the Senate by a vote of 23-3, and the House voted on a similar version of the bill last week, passing it with a vote of 63-15. The most current version of the bill is set to be voted on later this week.

The State Capitol also has monuments in remembrance of the atrocities of slavery and the Holocaust.

“Both of these monuments that are already here recognize that atrocities occurred because human beings were treated as less than human,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Republican State Representative Bill Dunn.

“In both cases, the vulnerable and defenseless were subjected to the will of the powerful… The taking of the life of a baby in the womb is related to this brand of inhumanity,” he added.

Many may find the planned inscription on the monument controversial. However, one of the goals of the monument is to highlight the impact abortion has had not only on the unborn child whose life is taken, but also on the other people involved in the abortion as well.

“While the baby can be seen as the obvious victim, the women coerced into abortion, the fathers who can’t protect their unborn child, the brothers and sisters who lose a sibling, and society as a whole who becomes coarsened because life is cheapened” are victims also, Dunn explained.

This would not be the first of this type of monument in Tennessee. The National Memorial for the Unborn was erected in Chattanooga in 1994. It is dedicated to “healing generations of pain associated with the loss of aborted and miscarried children.”

Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0