HELENA — On Friday, a number of hundred folks crammed the Montana State Capitol rotunda, praising new legal guidelines limiting abortion within the state and calling for extra motion within the coming months.
They took half within the annual Montana State March for Life, held every year across the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s Roe v. Wade choice, which established a nationwide proper to abortion in 1973. The occasion brings collectively a variety of organizations that advocated towards abortion in Montana.
“This can be a nice day for all times,” mentioned Gov. Greg Gianforte.
Gianforte was one among a variety of elected leaders in attendance, together with U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale.
Audio system on the Capitol rally celebrated what they known as the largest successes for his or her motion in years. Gianforte, Montana’s first Republican governor in 16 years, signed a sequence of latest laws on abortion handed by the Republican majority within the state Legislature.
“For too lengthy in Montana, your voices haven’t been heard within the governor’s workplace – or worse, they have been ignored,” he mentioned. “For too lengthy, legislators labored tirelessly to get payments signed into regulation to guard life, with no success. For too lengthy, measures defending life had been met with a veto pen. We modified that.”
Many on the occasion mentioned the battle over abortion is way from over. They expressed confidence {that a} conservative majority of Supreme Court docket justices will overturn Roe v. Wade later this yr.
“When that’s overturned, this battle strikes entrance and middle to the states,” mentioned Daines. “By the grace of God and the election of 2020, Montana is able to take management right here and proceed to work to guard the lives of the unborn.”
Daines argued that there’s been a change in how the general public views abortion, significantly as we study extra concerning the growth of a fetus. Different audio system echoed that, speaking about plans to arrange and promote, in hopes of reframing the difficulty as one among human rights starting earlier than beginning.
“We’ve obtained to alter the hearts, the minds and the souls of the individuals who reside right here, so that they cease selecting this selection,” mentioned Angela Copenhaver, who created the Human from Day One Undertaking – a bunch already working TV advertisements in Montana.
Jonathon Ambarian
After the Capitol rally completed, the occasion continued with a march to the Mazurek Justice Constructing, which homes the Montana Supreme Court docket. Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Household Basis, mentioned they took that step as a result of they need the justices to finish two injunctions which might be stopping some abortion restrictions from taking impact.
The primary case they introduced up is a present lawsuit difficult three payments the Legislature handed and Gianforte signed final yr. These legal guidelines ban abortion after 20 weeks of being pregnant, severely prohibit abortion-inducing tablets and require suppliers to ask ladies in the event that they need to hear the fetal heartbeat or see an ultrasound of the fetus earlier than having an abortion.
Deliberate Parenthood and one among its physicians filed swimsuit over the legal guidelines, saying they unconstitutionally infringed on ladies’s proper to privateness. In October, state District Decide Michael Moses blocked the legal guidelines from taking impact, saying the opponents had made a powerful case that they need to be invalidated.
Moses’ choice has been appealed to the Montana Supreme Court docket.
The opposite case Laszloffy introduced up offers with LR-120, a 2011 voter-approved regulation that requires suppliers to inform dad and mom earlier than performing an abortion on a woman beneath the age of 16. It has additionally been enjoined due to a lawsuit.
The Supreme Court docket despatched that case again to a decrease court docket. Laszloffy says the case has been sitting in district court docket for years with out substantial progress, and he urged justices to take motion once more.
