Every so often, a headline pops up that feels like it’s been mistakenly delivered from another era—a sort of historical misfire that would be easier to believe if you squinted and replaced the smartphone in your hand with a rotary dial. That’s pretty much the sensation hovering over the latest news out of Jonesborough, Tennessee, where, as detailed by Rachel Wells in TN Repro News, one woman discovered that being pregnant and unmarried in 2025 can still get you shut out of medical care. Yes, you read that correctly—and no, this isn’t a reissue of a cautionary pamphlet from 1953.

A Doctor, “Christian Values,” and a Denied Appointment

The story, shared during a recent town hall, reads like something you’d expect from the plot of an especially heavy-handed period drama. A woman, partnered for 15 years with a teenage son at home, made what she thought would be a routine visit to her OB-GYN—only to be informed that her lack of a wedding ring meant her doctor “didn’t feel comfortable treating her,” as it would violate their “Christian values.” Instead of receiving prenatal care, she’s now making out-of-state trips to Virginia just to get basic medical attention.

This isn’t simply a matter of one provider’s personal opinion. As recounted in TN Repro News, Tennessee’s freshly minted 2025 Medical Ethics Defense Act gives physicians and insurers the legal right to refuse care based on any “religious, moral, or ethical belief.” The law imposes no requirement for referrals or alternate suggestions, offers no legal recourse for patients denied care, and doesn’t carve out exceptions for those living in rural areas where doctors are already in short supply.

Ethics or Excuse? The Medical Wild West

When the law passed, supporters such as Rep. Bryan Terry (R–Murfreesboro) claimed it would help Tennessee draw in more physicians; the outlet notes he argued the measure would aid recruitment and retention. However, TN Repro News also points out that since Tennessee’s total abortion ban took effect, the number of OB-GYNs in the state has been dropping, not rising. The supposed draw isn’t materializing, and patients are left with dwindling options.

Stack that against Tennessee’s chilling maternal health statistics—highest maternal mortality rate in the country, and among the worst in infant mortality, as the report documents. Refusals to expand Medicaid and ongoing closures of rural hospitals only intensify the shortage of care, while the recent cuts to federal Medicaid under President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” put insurance for 300,000 Tennesseans at risk. All these realities, combined with new leeway for providers to turn people away according to their conscience, hardly seem calculated to improve outcomes for pregnant patients or infants.

The contradiction is hard to ignore. Even as self-described “pro-life” legislators trumpet their values, pregnant women who actively want to bring children into the world are being denied care. Rep. Gloria Johnson, as reshared by TN Repro News, underscored the broader implications, questioning who else might find themselves left out: people with addiction, mental health struggles, or simply any “lifestyle” deemed objectionable. When medical ethics are defined so flexibly, at whose expense does this new freedom operate?

Pushing Patients (and Progress) Out the Door

There’s a routine to these stories that’s hard to miss once you’ve seen it play out enough times: a law passes in the name of “freedom,” much is made of “values,” and then, quietly, doors start closing for people who don’t fit a particular mold. TN Repro News succinctly observes the inherent absurdity: how can a system claim to be protecting life while denying basic health care to those who seek it?

And in a final ironic twist, Tennessee did recently pass a law protecting access to contraception and IVF, as referenced in the same report. Yet skepticism remains about how effective this will actually be, especially as new restrictions are debated and patients continue facing barriers.

So, What Year Is It Again?

It’s hard not to get a sense of déjà vu here. Digging through mid-century newspaper archives, you find stories about people denied services for crossing invisible social lines—a reminder that the line between past and present isn’t always a straight shot forward. In Tennessee, 2025, some of those sepia-toned cautionary tales seem more alive than ever.

Efforts by the woman in question to reach her state representatives have met silence at best and, at worst, the apparent shrug of indifference—TN Repro News recounts her report that Sen. Bill Hagerty’s office told her he isn’t “obligated to listen to his constituents.” There’s something bleakly comic about the mental image: a government office where the phones go unanswered—and so do the people.

It all begs the question: for those in places where the closest available care might be hours away and the rules for admission change with the prevailing winds, what recourse exists? How far does this new “ethical” discretion spill into public life, and at what social cost?

It would be tempting to frame this as an unfortunate outlier, the sort of oddity you’d file away and hope not to see repeated. But every pattern tells a story, and the pattern here suggests a determined resistance to change—one that’s backed not just by local preference, but by law.

So, in Tennessee, 2025, what exactly counts as progress? And who gets to decide whose life is worth caring for? Sometimes, the past really is prologue—the archive only grows stranger by the day.