On Wednesday, representatives from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, Georgetown University Law Center and the ACLU spoke about the bill, which they said may be the most radical bill in the country, even at a time when hundreds of bills dealing with the LGBTQ community are moving through legislatures throughout the U.S.

“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.

“This bill concedes that parental consent is no longer needed in Montana, instead requiring consultation of a parent or guardian. That means that this Legislature is agreeing that parents have no say in consenting to their minors' abortions. Is that really the Legislature's intent?” asked Quinn Leighton, the director of external affairs for Planned Parenthood of Montana.

HB 862 would block using state funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger. It would bring Montana’s laws in line with the longstanding federal policy called the Hyde Amendment.

Montana has had a different standard. Since a 1995 court ruling, the state has used its own general funds to cover abortions that have been determined to be “medically necessary,” even if the mother’s life isn’t endangered.

“And we all understand, while abstinence is the most effective form of birth control, it's kind of an unrealistic expectation a lot of the time. Plus, a lot of women have health issues that are controlled or helped out by taking birth control pills also. And those include things like ovarian cysts, endometriosis. They need the pills to help them function properly and correctly. And it's a matter of health. So this bill will basically help prevent delays in coverage,” Small said.

Financially, the cost of SB 458 could be billions. Morally, however, the cost to Montana will be immeasurable.

If the bill becomes law, it’s unclear how its directives would be carried out, and legal experts say its provisions would be easily challenged in court. But the immediate effect would be to prevent transgender and gender-nonconforming people from being protected by anti-discrimination laws, increase hostility and scrutiny of individual gender expression, and potentially cost the state billions in federal funds.

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.

A deep-dive fiscal note requested by legislative Democrats and distributed Friday says Montana could lose “any, all or none” of its $7.5 billion federal special revenue authority — federal grants, in other words — if Senate Bill 458, legislation to define “sex” in Montana law, is enacted.

“Forcing someone to give birth against their will is unconscionable, and Montanans will not stand for this government intrusion into our private lives and our personal decisions,” said Aileen Gleizer, with Missoula’s Blue Mountain Clinic. “If you pass this law, you’ll be responsible for harming low-income Montana families and burdening Montanans with costs of paying for forced child bearing.”

“Let’s face it, we are here today because some of you are uncomfortable looking at transgender people. So you are trying to make it harder for them to exist,” said Jessica Vangarderen Weingarten, a Belgrade mother with a transgender daughter.

The package of anti-abortion bills includes House Bill 625that would create a felony offense for providers who fail care for infants born after an abortion. The protection exists in federal law and infanticide is a crime.

As Montana legislators consider a slate of bills to restrict access to abortion at the state level, some Montana companies with Fortune 500 clients are saying that would be bad for business here.

This legislative session some legislators have stopped listening to their constituents and experts as they adopt new laws and regulations. These legislators are not hearing and are not willing to listen to reasonable arguments to amend or reject bad bills. The debate and passage in the House of HB 303, the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act, exemplifies this legislative deafness.

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.

Legislative staff attorneys also said the bill created “potential constitutional conformity issues” with the state Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling granting pre-viability abortion access from a chosen provider.

Friday is the transmittal deadline, when any bill that doesn’t appropriate money or affect state revenues must pass through at least one chamber in order to keep moving forward. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee held initial hearings on more than a dozen bills, including two that would tighten regulations on abortion in Montana.

There were no proponents of the bill and 11 opponents. Opponents said the bill would not only infringe on Montanans’ right to privacy, but place people with time-sensitive medical emergencies related to their pregnancy in danger.

“This is a bill that really attempts to ease the burden of menstruation by protecting access to menstrual products in retail settings, schools, and homeless shelters and prisons. We have toilet paper that is freely available in bathrooms, so why are menstrual products any different?”