In November, voters in Montana, which on Tuesday became the eighth state to put the question to the vote this fall, will have to decide whether to uphold the state’s abortion rights as guaranteed by the constitution.
The initiative on abortion rights will be on the ballot for the general election, according to a certification from the Montana Secretary of State’s Office. Eight states, with the exception of one, are looking to modify their constitutions.
In response to Republican attempts by lawmakers to overturn the 1999 Montana Supreme Court ruling that the right to a pre-viability abortion by a provider of the patient’s choosing is protected by the constitutional right to privacy, the measure attempts to enshrine that decision.
This is particularly relevant in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which left the abortion issue up to the states.
Martha Fuller, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Montana, issued a statement saying, “Since Roe was overturned, extreme anti-abortion politicians have used every trick in the book to take away our freedoms and ban abortion completely. During that time, we have been working together to put this issue before voters.”
A law enacted in 2023 by Republican lawmakers in Montana said that the right to an abortion is not protected by the right to privacy. It hasn’t yet been contested in court.
The initiative’s backers filed many lawsuits against its opponents, who made multiple attempts to keep it off the ballot. The proposed ballot initiative was deemed legally insufficient by Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen at first.
Following his overturn by the Montana Supreme Court, Knudsen revised the ballot language to state that the proposed amendment would “eliminate the State’s compelling interest in preserving prenatal life,” “allow post-viability abortions up to birth,” and possibly “increase the number of taxpayer-funded abortions.”
The petitioners claimed that some had attempted to scare voters into not signing, and the high court ultimately wrote its own initiative language for the petitions used to collect signatures.
Reversing nearly thirty years of precedent, the Secretary of State’s Office also altered the rules to state that the signatures of inactive voters would not be accepted.
Once the signatures were received and counties started to check some of them, the office made computer modifications to reject the signatures of inactive voters. Back in court once more, supporters were granted an extension of time as well as an injunction for counties to confirm the signatures of absentee voters.
Those who completed a universal change-of-address form but neglected to update their voter registration with a new address are considered inactive voters. Voters are added to an inactive list if counties sent that address twice without receiving a reply.
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More over 81,000 signatures were collected by supporters, or almost 10.5% of all voters.
In order to qualify for 40 or more state House districts, the campaign needed to collect the signatures of at least 10% of the district’s voters who cast ballots for governor in 2020. This required just over 60,000 signatures. Fifty-nine districts qualified for the initiative.
The 1999 decision of the state Supreme Court has been the subject of multiple challenges by Republican lawmakers, including a request for the verdict to be overturned.
In 2021 and 2023, the Republican-controlled Legislature also enacted a number of legislation restricting access to abortion, one of which said that the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution does not extend to abortion rights.
The state Supreme Court of Montana overturned a 2013 legislation last week, ruling that adolescents in the state are not need to obtain parental consent in order to obtain an abortion.
Since Roe was overturned, voters have already been asked questions about abortion in seven states: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont. Abortion advocates have prevailed in each of these states.
A referendum that would have created criminal penalties for medical professionals who fail to take “all medically appropriate and reasonable actions to preserve the life” of a newborn alive, including following an attempted abortion, was rejected by Montana voters in 2022.
Opponents and medical professionals contended that if doctors are compelled to try therapy, it might have robbed parents of valuable time when their infants are born with irreversible medical conditions.
