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

Swanson told KFF Health News that judges shouldn’t decide how they would rule on abortion or any other topic until a case is before the court.

Fuller said Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana has not yet decided how it will get involved in the Supreme Court races but that it likely will.

“If people are not paying attention to who is making these decisions and who is winning these judicial races, we could lose that ability to have that backstop,” she said.

Regardless of whom voters choose to seat on the court, any change in this election is unlikely to immediately swing a majority of the seven-member court to overturn the 1999 ruling protecting abortion access, according to Bennion.

In Iowa, conservatives were able to reverse a state Supreme Court precedent similar to Montana’s after more Republican-appointed justices joined the bench.

In Montana, the abortion issue is playing out more quickly in the state’s lower courts.

In February, a state court overturned three laws that would have restricted abortion, including a ban on the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Last year, another state judge temporarily blocked several anti-abortion measures including a ban on the most common abortion procedure used in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Frustrated by the courts, Republican officials have also used the executive branch to try to restrict abortions. The Gianforte administration implemented a rule to reduce Medicaid-funded abortions by defining when an abortion is medically necessary, limiting who can perform them, and requiring preauthorization for most cases.

But that rule and a new state law that mirrors it have also been temporarily blocked by a judge. Knudsen has appealed those injunctions, as well as the judge’s ruling from February, to the Montana Supreme Court.

And this month, the high court heard oral arguments as the state attempts to overturn a judicial block of a 2013 law requiring parental consent before a minor may have an abortion.