Today was yet another disappointing day in the life of our Montana State Supreme Court. In a
6-1 decision the Court affirmed the District Court’s ruling declaring three abortion-related
measures passed by the 2021 legislature unconstitutional. Those bills were HB 136, the
establishment of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, HB 140, requiring a pregnant
woman be given the opportunity to view an active ultrasound and listen to the fetal heartbeat
before undergoing an abortion, and HB 171, banning “do it yourself” at-home abortions using
mail order drugs as well as banning abortion inducing drugs from being dispensed in public
school clinics. This decision permanently enjoins the enforcement of these bills which were all
passed by our legislature and signed into law by our Governor. It also rejects the challenge to
the 1999 Armstrong decision and not only broadly reaffirms Armstrong, it even expands on it by
stating it includes an individual’s right to personal autonomy. Unfortunately, that “right to
personal autonomy” or the “right to be let alone” does not apply to preborn human beings.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Jim Rice rightly stated that determining all three abortion-
related laws are unconstitutional in their entirety “furthers an absolutist application of the right
to privacy that fails to account for the State’s vital role in protecting and preserving human life
and to permit the State to act thereon”. He further states that “the protection of human life
should be considered, and has been so considered since the foundations of American
jurisprudence were laid, more than merely ‘compelling’. Protecting life was the first purpose in
the founding of our democracy, and it should continue to be recognized as the State’s highest
interest. The law cannot be correctly applied without starting with the unassailable
proposition—that the inalienable right of living should be guaranteed to all persons ‘born
free’.”
Elections have consequences, and, in Montana, the election of justices who do not recognize
that “the right of living should be guaranteed to all persons” has cost the lives of thousands of
Montana lives, those preborn babies who didn’t get the “right to be let alone”. On July 1, CI
128 will go into effect. That Constitutional Amendment expands on our already extremely
liberal abortion laws. How many more lives must be sacrificed before Montanans decide that
the “right of living should be guaranteed to all persons”?
-Sharon Nason, Chair
ProLife Montana
www.prolifemontana.com