Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed on Wednesday a collection of bills restricting access to abortion, triggering legal action and challenging a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling on the procedure.
While abortion remains legal in Montana, the legislation specifies that access to the procedure until viability is no longer protected under the right of privacy in the state’s constitution – contradicting the court’s two decades old ruling.
“For years in Montana, abortion activists have used the cloak of a shaky legal interpretation to advance their pro-abortion agenda. That stops today,” Gianforte said in a statement Wednesday, describing the new laws as “giving a voice to the voiceless.”
The restrictions come as states navigate a new abortion landscape in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade last year, which removed federal abortion protections. Several Republican-led states have enacted restrictions, while some Democratic-led states have passed legislation expanding access to their residents and those seeking care from other states.
One of the new laws Gianforte signed Wednesday establishes a “right of conscience” that allows health care providers or institutions to refuse to perform abortions if it violates their “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles.”
Another bill, HB625, signed by Gianforte Wednesday, requires health care providers, in the rare case a baby is born alive after an attempted abortion, to give care to the infant or face fines and imprisonment. However, it is already considered homicide in the US to intentionally kill an infant that is born alive.
While Gianforte said that the slate of “pro-family, pro-child, pro-life bills will make a lasting difference in Montana,” Democrats and abortion rights advocates argue that the new laws add “unnecessary”…
Read the full article here