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 Montana trial judge has blocked two new state laws that allegedly eliminate access to abortion for Medicaid patients and others who depend on state money to pay for their care.

A Helena judge has blocked four anti-abortion bills and a health department rule restricting Medicaid coverage of abortion while lawsuits challenging their constitutionality play out.

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 Helena district court judge on Tuesday barred the state from enforcing five new abortion restrictions while litigation over their constitutionality continues.

A state District Court judge on Tuesday put the brakes on several new abortion restrictions in Montana, including laws to tighten requirements for medically necessary abortions covered by Medicaid, require ultrasounds and ban the most commonly used procedure to terminate pregnancies in the second trimester.

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.

A press secretary for the attorney general’s office did not respond to questions Monday about how Attorney General Austin Knudsen plans to enforce the dilation and evacuation ban, House Bill 721.Representatives of Planned Parenthood of Montana, one of the state’s abortion providers impacted by the new law, framed HB 721 as contradictory to the state Constitution and medical best practices in a Tuesday statement. The group filed a motion for a temporary restraining order shortly after 2:00 p.m., asking Helena District Court Judge Mike Menahan to prevent the state and the attorney general’s office from enforcing the law.

“Absent emergency injunctive relief, Montanans will be irreparably harmed by denial of their constitutionally protected right to access pre-viability abortion care and will suffer irreversible health consequences,” the filing said.

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.

“It really feels like they are attacking abortion care for lower income folks and folks who may rely on public assistance or Medicaid funding. And so, I think looking at low income folks and then folks who have just systemically and institutionally run into barriers to healthcare, so, you know, communities of color, LGBTQ people, transgender people, I think are those who are going to potentially run into continued barriers,” Leighton said.

They also said it’s likely that some of the bills will end up in Montana’s courts.

“The sad reality is that they're -- they're passing these knowing that it will be a waste of taxpayer time and money because they will be litigated later. Knowing, knowing that they're unconstitutional,” Leighton said.

“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.