HELENA, Montana (LifeSiteNews) — The Montana Supreme Court has struck down a trio of state pro-life laws, ruling that they all run afoul of a 2024 amendment declaring a “right” to abortion in the state constitution.
The Associated Press reports that the state’s highest court ruled against Montana’s 20-week abortion ban, requirements that women be offered an ultrasound viewing and wait 24 hours before an abortion, and a ban on dispensing abortion pills via remote telehealth visits.
The majority argued that the laws violated both a 1999 ruling that the Montana Constitution’s “right to be left alone” includes a “right” to abortion and Montana’s 2024 “Right to Abortion Initiative.”
Last fall, 57 percent of voters approved adding the initiative to the state constitution. It proposes a “right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the [so-called] right to abortion,” which it says “shall not be denied or burdened unless justified by a compelling government interest achieved by the least restrictive means,” clarifying that such an interest is only “compelling” if it “clearly and convincingly addresses a medically acknowledged, bona fide health risk to a pregnant patient and does not infringe on the patient’s autonomous decision making.”
“The government may regulate the provision of abortion care [sic] after fetal viability provided that in no circumstance shall the government deny or burden access to an abortion that, in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional [i.e., abortionist], is medically indicated to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient,” it adds, effectively leaving it up to an abortionist to deem that an abortion is allegedly “medically indicated.”
In response, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said, “clinging to a shaky, outdated ruling and failing to account for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions, these activist justices aren’t interpreting the law. They’re overreaching, making law from the bench and rejecting the will of Montanans’ duly-elected representatives who make laws.”
Attorney General Austin Knudsen added that the ruling was “another rubber stamp for Planned Parenthood from their allies on the Montana Supreme Court.”
Overall, 12 states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrents via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
Amendments have been one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tactics. Up until 2024, it had consistent success since the overturn of Roe v. Wade using false claims that pro-life laws are dangerous to stoke fear about the issue among the general public.
After 2020, pro-lifers either failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Kansas, and Ohio, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box as well as consternation within the Republican Party over the political ramifications of continuing to take a clear pro-life position.
Ten states had such amendments on the ballot in November 2024. Pro-lifers defeated pro-abortion ballot initiatives in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, breaking the abortion lobby’s two-year winning streak, but amendments to embed abortion “rights” in state constitutions prevailed in the remaining states.
