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Advocates launch effort to enshrine abortion rights in Montana constitution [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-11-27  

Reproductive rights advocates have announced plans to place a constitutional amendment safeguarding the right to an abortion on the ballot next year in Montana, a state that has become an oasis for many seeking abortion care in the western United States.

Montana owes its unusual status to a 1999 decision by the state Supreme Court that overturned a state law prohibiting physician assistants from performing abortions. A unanimous court determined that the state constitution's explicit guarantee of the "right of individual privacy"—language not found in the federal constitution—also "protects a woman's right of procreative autonomy," including the right to seek a "pre-viability abortion, from a health care provider of her choice."

Thanks to that ruling, known as Armstrong v. State, abortion has remained legal in Montana even as all of its neighbors have passed bans. With only limited exceptions, the procedure is now illegal in Idaho, North Dakota, and South Dakota, while a near-total ban in Wyoming is on hold due to pending litigation.

Abortion rights supporters are cognizant, though, that Montana's high court could one day reverse Armstrong—a goal that Republicans have openly sought for some time. Ahead of a hotly contested Supreme Court election last year, in which conservatives unsuccessfully sought to oust a swing justice who has voted in favor of abortion rights, one conservative activist made the stakes explicit.

"We can either amend the Montana Constitution to ban abortion or we can replace enough justices on the Montana Supreme Court to overturn the Armstrong decision," the Montana Family Foundation's Jeff Laszloffy told MPR.

Reproductive rights proponents are aiming to get there first—though as usual, there's a long road ahead. As Mara Silvers of the Montana Free Press notes, the amendment's supporters will first have to win the approval of both a state board and state Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican. They'll then have to gather 60,000 signatures, an amount equal to 10% of the vote in the most recent election for governor, including 10% in at least 40 of the 100 districts in the state House. (Fortunately for progressives, Montana's bipartisan redistricting commission has prevented the GOP from gerrymandering the state's maps.)

If the amendment can make it onto next year's ballot, though, backers have reason for optimism. Last year, by a 53-47 margin, Montana voters rejected a GOP-sponsored measure called LR-131 that would have required doctors to take drastic steps to treat infants born with lethal abnormalities or face criminal penalties. While the right to an abortion was not directly implicated, groups like Planned Parenthood opposed LR-131 precisely because it was aimed at chipping away reproductive autonomy.

Even some Republicans read the vote the same way. "I think it sends a little bit of a message about abortion in Montana and what people might feel about it," state Sen. Greg Hertz told the Free Press last year following LR-131's defeat. "My personal feeling is an all-out abortion ban is probably not supported by a majority of Montanans."

Polling backs that up. Data from Civiqs shows that 52% of Montanans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 44% who want it to be illegal in all or most cases—and the proportion who favor abortion access has steadily grown since the Dobbs decision. Should organizers succeed in placing their amendment on the ballot, there is good reason to think that Montana will cement its status as a haven for reproductive rights.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/27/2208337/-Advocates-launch-effort-to-enshrine-abortion-rights-in-Montana-constitution?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_recent_news&pm_medium=web

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