Montana, an island of abortion access, preps for consequential elections and court decisions

A years-long battle over abortion access in a sprawling and sparsely populated region of the U.S. may come to a head this year in the courts and at the ballot box.

Challenges to several state laws designed to chip away at abortion access are pending in Montana courts. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates are pushing a ballot initiative that would add extra protections to the state constitution. And two open state Supreme Court seats could shape whether the high court upholds past decisions that protected abortion rights in the state.

Abortion remains legal in the conservative stronghold because of a 25-year-old state Supreme Court ruling that protected it under the right to privacy included in the state’s constitution.

So far, most efforts by Montana’s Republican governor and GOP-led legislature to overcome that obstacle have gone nowhere. Montana courts have blocked multiple laws that would have restricted abortion.

It’s “a very daunting hurdle for those who would seek to undermine abortion access,” said Kal Munis, an assistant professor of political science at Utah Valley University and expert on politics in Montana, his home state.

Munis said to outlaw abortion, voters would need to amend the state constitution or elect Supreme Court justices willing to reverse precedent.

But it is abortion rights advocates who have jumped on the chance to amend the state constitution. A legal fight is brewing over a ballot initiative proposed for the November election that would add abortion protections to the constitution.

Meanwhile, two open state Supreme Court seats are up for election, and some of the candidates are signaling that abortion access will be a campaign issue.

Voters have to be thinking about the future of abortion from “multiple fronts,” said Martha Fuller, CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana, which is suing to block several anti-abortion laws, backing the proposed constitutional amendment, and monitoring the Supreme Court races.

Montana anti-abortion advocates celebrated when Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte was elected in 2020 after 16 years of Democratic governors and, since 2011, vetoes of anti-abortion laws passed by the Republican-controlled legislature.

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