Scott DesJarlais Abortion Corruption & Ethics Tennessee

In March, Scott DesJarlais Signed On to a Bill Banning Abortion From the Moment of Fertilization. He Once Pressured His Own Patient Into Having One.

DesJarlais cosponsored the Life at Conception Act on March 4, 2026 — no exception for rape or incest. Under oath in 2001 he admitted to affairs with patients and coworkers, and a recorded call caught him telling a pregnant patient she had promised him an abortion.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 11, 2026

In March, Scott DesJarlais Signed On to a Bill Banning Abortion From the Moment of Fertilization. He Once Pressured His Own Patient Into Having One.

On March 4, 2026, Scott DesJarlais added his name to H.R. 722, the Life at Conception Act.

It is the most sweeping abortion ban that has been filed in this Congress. It declares that the terms "human person" and "human being" cover "each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization." That's it. There is no exception for rape. None for incest. None for the health of the pregnant woman. The only carve-out in the entire bill is a line saying a woman herself can't be prosecuted for the death of her own unborn child.

Five months later, on August 6, DesJarlais won his primary in a redrawn 4th District, beating three challengers to secure the Republican nomination for a ninth term.

So it's worth going back over what this particular congressman did before he started writing other people's reproductive rules.

The phone call

In September 2000, DesJarlais was a doctor in Jasper, Tennessee, and chief of staff at Grandview Medical Center. He was also having an affair with one of his patients, and she believed she was pregnant.

He got on the phone with her. The call was recorded. Twelve years later, during his 2012 reelection campaign, the transcript came out.

"You told me you'd have an abortion, and now we're getting too far along without one."

"Well, we've got to do something soon."

Those are his words, as published from the transcript by Roll Call and The Huffington Post in October 2012. His campaign's response at the time did not deny the call happened or that the transcript was accurate. It called the story "gutter politics."

DesJarlais publicly insisted he had not made the recording himself — that he had been "recorded unknowingly and without my consent."

Then the divorce transcript came out.

What he said under oath

Two weeks after DesJarlais won the 2012 election, the Chattanooga Times Free Press obtained the full transcript of his 2001 divorce trial. In it, under oath, he admitted:

Sexual relationships with at least six people he encountered through his job as a hospital chief of staff — among them two patients, three coworkers, and a pharmaceutical sales representative.
That his ex-wife had two abortions, which he supported. He testified that "things were not going well between us and it was a mutual decision," and called it "a very difficult and poor choice."
That he and his then-wife had, in fact, decided together to record the phone call — directly contradicting what he had told his own supporters months earlier.

His explanation for the contradiction: "One of the biggest mistakes I made was I commented to the press before I had the opportunity to go back and read a transcript that was 13, 14 years old. It was never my intention to mislead anyone."

He had lived it. He didn't need a transcript to remember it.

The state medical board reprimanded him. It cost him $500.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with Tennessee's medical regulators. In May 2013 the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners formally reprimanded DesJarlais for unprofessional conduct — sleeping with two of his own patients — and fined him $500, plus $1,000 in investigation costs. He did not contest the findings. His spokesman said simply, "He accepts the ruling of the board."

The board calculated the fine at $250 per patient.

Melanie Sloan of CREW told the Times Free Press what that was worth:

"There are more expensive speeding tickets. Tennessee authorities apparently believe sexual exploitation of women is less serious than speeding."

In 2014, Politico ran a profile of him headlined "The Biggest Hypocrite in Congress?"

Why this matters in 2026 and not just in 2012

It would be easy to file this under old news. DesJarlais would prefer that. He said on Tennessee radio, three weeks after the 2012 election, that "God has forgiven me," and asked his constituents to consider doing the same.

Forgiveness is between him and whoever he's asking. It has nothing to do with the bill he signed in March.

Because here is the actual situation. A man who used his position as a physician to sleep with his own patients, who pressed one of them to end a pregnancy, and who supported his wife's two abortions, is now cosponsoring legislation that would give a fertilized egg the full protection of the 14th Amendment — for everybody else. Under that bill, a rape victim in Tennessee's 4th District would have fewer options than the women in Scott DesJarlais's own life did.

He is not alone. We've written before about the Republicans with the worst records on abortion, several of whom are original cosponsors of the same fertilization-onward bill. What sets DesJarlais apart is not the vote. It's that his own sworn testimony is the counterexample.

The opponent

The Democrat he'll face in November is Victoria Broderick, who won her primary the same night. The Nashville Banner reports she "was first inspired to get involved in politics after Roe v. Wade was overturned." She also ran against him in 2024 and lost by more than 40 points.

The Banner's own account of DesJarlais's record is one sentence long and needs no adjectives: he "weathered intense scrutiny early in his tenure in Congress when it was revealed that the pro-life Republican had encouraged multiple women, including a mistress who was one of his patients, to get abortions."

He weathered it. Eight times now. That's not the same as it not being true.