Legal Note finds House Speaker’s abortion bill may be unconstitutional
A legal note attached to an abortion bill sponsored by House Speaker Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, says it may raise a “constitutional conformity issue,” while a different bill resurrected the language from the “Born Alive” ballot issue which failed with Montana voters at the polls last fall.
Regier’s House Bill 721 would ban “dismemberment abortion,” defined in the bill as inserting “grasping instruments” and removing “disarticulated fetal parts from a living unborn human being.” The bill outlines fetal viability, the cutoff for legal abortion healthcare, at 12 weeks gestation.
The penalty would include up to a $50,000 fine and as many as five years jail time for healthcare professionals who perform this surgery outside of an emergency.
Abortion is currently protected under the state Supreme Court opinion, Armstrong vs. State, which found abortion is covered under the state’s right to privacy.
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.