Montana Lawmakers Vote Down Bill That Would Have Treated Cross-Border Abortion Seekers as Traffickers of Their 'Unborn
(and the WAR ON WOMEN continues apace!!!)
Montana Lawmakers Vote Down Bill That Would Have Treated Cross-Border Abortion Seekers as Traffickers of Their ‘Unborn Children’
PUBLISHED 2/27/2025 by Shoshanna Ehrlich | UPDATED 2/28/2025 at 11:12 A.M. PT
Abortion rights supporters wear pink shirts that say, "Abortion rights voter" and hold signs that say, "We decide."Signs supporting the Right to Abortion Initiative are displayed during a rally on Sept. 5, 2024 in Bozeman, Mont. (William Campbell / Getty Images)
On Nov. 5, 2024, Montana voters decisively approved a ballot initiative enshrining the right to abortion up until fetal viability (about 24 weeks gestation) in the state Constitution. On Monday, Feb. 24, Montana Republicans introduced a radical antiabortion “trafficking” bill that would have made seeking an out-of-state abortion after viability, or simply helping someone get one, a felony. Idaho and Tennessee have already criminalized the “abortion trafficking” of a minor in an effort to prevent them from accessing (legal) out-of-state abortions, and a handful of municipalities (mainly in Texas) have made it a civil offense to use local roads to access (legal) cross-border abortion care. But Montana’s proposed law would have broken new ground: Adding another level of state surveillance and control, the trafficking law would have made it a crime for a pregnant person to “transport an unborn child” across state lines “for the purpose of procuring an abortion” that is illegal in Montana; namely, a post-viability procedure. (As Jessica Valenti writes, “By only targeting those seeking post-‘viability’ care, Republicans get an easy messaging spin: ‘We’re not stopping women from leaving the state—we’re just ending “abortion up until birth!”‘) It would also have criminalized aiding or assisting “another person in transporting an unborn child,” presumably by driving them to their abortion appointment or perhaps even by filling the tank with gas or making sandwiches for the road.
Late on Thursday, Feb. 27, after intense and emotional committee hearings, eight Democratic lawmakers joined eight Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to vote down the bill, HB 609. Four Republicans still voted in support of it. “I think we need to address abortion in a wide variety of means,” said state Rep. Tracy Sharp, the Republican lawmaker who moved to table the felony abortion bill. “But some of these bills that we’ve been bringing up here, I just have to admit, I’m really uncomfortable with.” “I’m thrilled that Montanans don’t have to worry about this bill—for now,” Valenti warns. “But everything that happened this week is a warning sign that we’re going to see more legislation like this. … HB 609 was just a warning shot. … That’s why every time one of these bills come up—no matter how unlikely it is to pass—we need to make as big of a fuss as possible. We need to make sure they know that we’re watching.”
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Deeper Analysis of the Now-Tabled Extreme HB 609
Before the bill was tabled in committee, Martha Fuller, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana, condemned HB 609, calling it “an extreme criminalization of abortion seekers and their family members and others who support them. … This fall, Montanans overwhelmingly voted to protect our right to make personal medical decisions about abortion. When the response to that vote is the introduction of a outrageously draconian law seeking to criminalize those very decisions, it demonstrates how out of step with Montanans this is.” In addition to being out of step with Montanans, this bill combined some of the most dangerous legal trends in the national post-Roe reproductive ecosystem.
Let’s start with the underlying premise that one can “traffic” a fetus. As Texas resident and rabid antiabortion extremist Mark Lee Dickson, the driving force behind the municipal travel bans, argues in support of these efforts, “The unborn child is always taken against their will.’” However, the notion that an unborn child can be taken “against their will” denotes that they have a will that can be overtaken. This, of course, leads ineluctably to the assumption that the unborn trafficking ‘victim’ is a legal person with enforceable consent rights whose permission must somehow be obtained before heading out on the road. As I wrote in an earlier article, the idea of a fetus having a will that must be honored opens up the proverbial can of worms. Does this mean that a pregnant person must somehow consult with the fetus and secure its permission before engaging in conduct that might potentially present a risk, such as going skiing or indulging in that extra cup of coffee on the weekends? (Although seemingly absurd, this is the fraught landscape of fetal personhood at the core of Montana’s proposed trafficking law.)
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https://msmagazine.com/2025/02/27/montana-abortion-trafficking-law-criminalizes-pregnant-people-women/