Posters for Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, the group behind CI-128 in 2024. (Photo by Blair Miller, Daily Montanan)
More than 250 Montana medical professionals signed on to a letter released Thursday in support of Constitutional Initiative 128, the proposed amendment to enshrine abortion protections in the state Constitution which voters will decide on November’s ballot.
“We physicians and medical professionals can’t sit by while politicians continue their attacks on critical reproductive rights and patient privacy,” the open letter said. “… By passing this ballot measure, we can secure reproductive rights and protect the freedom to make personal decisions around pregnancy and abortion for our patients and all Montanans, for today and tomorrow.”
The letter was organized by the Committee to Protect Health Care, a national organization composed of both medical and non-medical professionals who lobby and train lawmakers and other government officials on expanding access to health care options.
Three of the Montana professionals who signed onto the Oct. 17 letter spoke in a news conference about the letter and why they were supporting CI-128 and urging others to do so as well.
Dr. Carey Downey, a family medicine physician in Butte; Dr. Trent Taylor, a Missoula family medicine physician; and Dr. Mary Guggenheim, a retired Bozeman pediatrician, explained how closely they work with their patients and those patients’ families to make the best medical decisions they can, and said they see CI-128 as a means to ensuring those relationships cannot be interfered with by Montana politicians.
Dr. Mary Guggenheim, a retired pediatrician from Bozeman, was one of more than 250 signatories to a letter in support of CI-128. (Screenshot via Committee to Protect Health Care news conference)
“Twenty-five years ago, I was in the Montana legislature, and I can say with certainty that neither I nor any other legislator have the right or even the ability to make women’s personal health decisions for them,” Guggenheim said. “Politicians sitting in the Capitol have no knowledge about how complex and how confusing pregnancy complications can sometimes be.”
CI-128 would amend the state Constitution to prohibit the government from interfering with an abortion before a fetus is viable. That is widely regarded as being 24 weeks, the three doctors said Thursday, but oftentimes in Montana, medical professionals use caution if a person is considering an abortion around 22 weeks to ensure they’re not violating state law, the doctors said.
The proposed amendment would also “expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion,” according to the ballot language. And it would prohibit the government from burdening abortion access when it is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother.
Both the letter and the doctors who spoke at the news conference noted that there were more than a dozen bills in 2023 that came from Montana Republican legislators that targeted abortion, and several of them were signed into law by Gov. Greg Gianforte. (Most that were signed were challenged in court and later struck down.)
They said those bills and the efforts by Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen to prevent the proposed initiative’s proponents from gathering signatures, then getting their signatures validated to have the measure make the ballot, showed Montana’s Republican government officials would like to further restrict abortion access.
Abortion laws are in the hands of lawmakers of each state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs, which effectively reversed protections in place under Roe vs. Wade since 1973. And despite efforts to codify the right federally, Congress has been unable to do so since the decision.
“Politicians in Montana have tried every trick in the book to delay, to obstruct, to mislead and ultimately block this amendment. They’ve thrown the kitchen sink at it to try to silence the voices of Montana voters,” Taylor said. “We know that anti-abortion extremists won’t stop until they’ve banned abortion complete. It’s our job to stop them.”
Dr. Trent Taylor, a family medicine physician in Missoula, spoke in support of CI-128 during a news conference on Oct. 17, 2024. (Screenshot via Committee to Protect Health Care news conference)
Downey said a friend from medical school who is currently practicing in Idaho told her that she’d be “terrified” to get pregnant there, where abortions are illegal outright except to protect the life of the mother and in the case of rape or incest.
She said another who had just finished a reproductive fellowship in Utah had been taking care of patients who traveled there from Idaho for abortion care.
“She thinks that it is gross and inappropriate that patients are not being taken care of in their hometowns by their local providers, risking complications by being forced to travel and delay care,” she said.
The doctors at the news conference said some Montana medical facilities are already struggling to retain staffing, and adding extra barriers for professionals and their patients could lead to an exodus of medical professionals and lacking care for Montanans.
Taylor said the 24-week line for viability is not broken in Montana and anyone needing emergency care and a possible abortion in the third trimester to protect their life or that of the fetus travels out of state to receive specialty care. He said politicians, including several Montana Republicans running for statewide seats, who claim that CI-128 would allow abortions either up to, or after, the moment of birth were “fear mongering to continue to scare people.”
He also knocked down claims from CI-128 opponents that the measure would allow essentially anyone in Montana to perform an abortion. That is up to credentialing boards and the state legislature as to whom it says can be qualified to perform medical procedures, Taylor said.
“It’s a ridiculous, bogus claim that tries to fear monger that we’re just going to have unregulated people calling themselves doctors doing abortions forever, and that’s not going to happen – as it already isn’t,” he said.
Martha Fuller, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana and spokesperson for the group behind the initiative, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, said the group was “proud” of the number of professionals who signed the letter.
The letter from the more than 250 medical professionals notes that Montana already rejected an abortion restriction initiative in 2022 and that polling has found most Montanans believe abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances.
“We know that decisions around pregnancy, including abortion, birth control, and miscarriage care, are deeply personal and private, and should be made by patients with advice from their trusted physicians and families,” the letter says. “There’s no room for political interference in our exam rooms.”
MT Medical Professionals Support CI-128