Healthy and Free Tennessee

Healthy and Free Tennessee (HFTN) is a network of agencies, organizations, and individuals working together to promote sexual health and reproductive freedom in the state of Tennessee. Its focus is on the intersections of racism, the criminal legal system, and reproductive justice, and it fights to improve access to reproductive health care for marginalized communities and fight punitive policies that seek to criminalize reproductive outcomes.

NIRH has worked with HFTN for many years, starting in 2013, when we supported the development and growth of the HFTN, including the creation of an organizational structure, mission, and goals. In 2014, HFTN played an instrumental role in the “No on One” campaign to prevent a state constitutional amendment from removing abortion as a constitutional right in Tennessee.

In 2021, NIRH worked with HFTN to ensure that incarcerated pregnant people in Tennessee can access adequate reproductive health care in a timely manner. Building on HFTN’s success in 2020 passing legislation to guarantee access to comprehensive prenatal care for incarcerated pregnant people, HFTN made inroads on 2021’s policy goals of addressing the inhumane shackling of incarcerated pregnant people. NIRH also supported HFTN to conduct a survey of Tennessee doulas and hold Tennessee’s first doula townhall meeting, with the priority of creating a policy agenda for birth equity in Tennessee.