The Montana Department of Justice and attorneys for the state have filed notices of appeal with the state Supreme Court after a judge in Helena blocked several newly signed bills restricting abortion access and a state health department rule on Medicaid-funded abortions.

A state judge has temporarily blocked new restrictive abortion policies from going into effect while their constitutionality can be hashed out in court. That order came after a 4-hour hearing in which both sides made their cases for or against the block.

A Montana District Court has temporarily blocked a new state ban on a specific abortion procedure commonly used after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Menahan notes in his ruling the law may be in violation of the Montana Constitution.

In the 2023 legislative session, Republicans introduced 13 bills attempting to limit abortion access, a substantial uptick from the seven anti-abortion bills brought by legislators in 2021, four in 2019, and two in 2017, 2015 and 2013.

A February 2023 poll showed that 75% of Montanans oppose changes to our constitutional right to privacy, a right that affirms our ability to make personal healthcare decisions about when or whether to have children. Yet our Montana Sexual & Reproductive Health Collective members continue to track 11 anti-abortion bills still under consideration — including two potential constitutional amendments.

“My major concern is how it will impact the ability to perform this procedure in an urgent fashion in a life-threatening situation,” [Tim Mitchell, a Missoula-based maternal-fetal medicine specialist] said, outlining situations where doctors are afraid to perform a D&E, even to save the life of a patient, for fear of legal retribution, a pattern that has taken shape in other states that have passed abortion bans.

The bill’s language specifically bans “dismemberment abortion,” a broadly defined, nonmedical term that has been the basis for similar prohibitions on D&E procedures in other states.

A legal note drafted by legislative staff states that HB 721 appears to prohibit all such procedures at any stage of pregnancy and could trigger a constitutional conflict by infringing on the right to seek a pre-viability abortion.

The legal notes concludes that given Montana’s broad right to privacy, HB 721 may raise a “constitutional conformity issue” because it infringes on a woman’s right to seek and obtain a pre-viability abortion and conflicts with precedent.