From Sharon Nason: My perspective on today's Montana Supreme Court Decision
Letter From Our Chair,
Today was yet another disappointing day in the life of our Montana State Supreme Court. In a 6-1 decision the Court affirmed the District Court’s ruling declaring three abortion-related measures passed by the 2021 legislature unconstitutional. Those bills were HB 136, the establishment of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, HB 140, requiring a pregnant woman be given the opportunity to view an active ultrasound and listen to the fetal heartbeat before undergoing an abortion, and HB 171, banning “do it yourself” at-home abortions using mail order drugs as well as banning abortion inducing drugs from being dispensed in public school clinics. This decision permanently enjoins the enforcement of these bills which were all passed by our legislature and signed into law by our Governor. It also rejects the challenge to the 1999 Armstrong decision and not only broadly reaffirms Armstrong, it even expands on it by stating it includes an individual’s right to personal autonomy. Unfortunately, that “right to personal autonomy” or the “right to be let alone” does not apply to preborn human beings.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Jim Rice rightly stated that determining all three abortion- related laws are unconstitutional in their entirety “furthers an absolutist application of the right to privacy that fails to account for the State’s vital role in protecting and preserving human life and to permit the State to act thereon”. He further states that “the protection of human life should be considered, and has been so considered since the foundations of American jurisprudence were laid, more than merely ‘compelling’. Protecting life was the first purpose in the founding of our democracy, and it should continue to be recognized as the State’s highest interest. The law cannot be correctly applied without starting with the unassailable proposition—that the inalienable right of living should be guaranteed to all persons ‘born free’.”
Elections have consequences, and, in Montana, the election of justices who do not recognize that “the right of living should be guaranteed to all persons” has cost the lives of thousands of Montana lives, those preborn babies who didn’t get the “right to be let alone”. On July 1, CI 128 will go into effect. That Constitutional Amendment expands on our already extremely liberal abortion laws. How many more lives must be sacrificed before Montanans decide that the “right of living should be guaranteed to all persons”?
For Life,
Sharon Nason, Chair
Prolife Montana
PH: 406-461-3021
