BOZEMAN — A constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights in Montana surged to victory Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, with a majority of voters in the state backing the amendment alongside every statewide Republican official on the ballot.
The Associated Press called the initiative in favor of the yes vote for Constitutional Initiative 128 just after 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday. With 87% of statewide votes counted, support for CI-128 held a nearly 15 percentage-point margin over its opposition.
Members of the ballot issue committee backing CI-128, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, celebrated the strong showing during a watch party Tuesday evening in downtown Bozeman.
“I believe we have shown each other, and the country, what it means to have Montana values,” said Martha Fuller, CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana, one of the groups supporting the constitutional amendment, in a tearful speech near midnight. “To look out for one another. To make decisions for ourselves. That life-saving abortion care is deeply private and only for us and our families, not the government, to decide.”
As Republicans dominated elections up and down Montana’s ticket and nationwide, abortion rights measures passed in many of the states where they were under consideration, including Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. Similar measures failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.
The state-by-state deliberation on the issue continues a trend that began after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to pre-viability abortion in 2022. As several states, including Ohio and Kansas, have since passed protective measures, the country’s shifting political landscape has also become more apparent. Opposition to abortion and its accessibility has long been considered a cornerstone of local and national Republican politics, with Democrats seen as the party that supports abortion rights.
Like some other states that expanded protections Tuesday evening, abortion access is currently legal in Montana under existing rights outlined in the state Constitution.
But in statewide advertising and conversations with voters, proponents cast CI-128 as a way to shore up abortion rights and clearly assert defenses for medical decision-making. Republican elected officials have in recent years called on the Montana Supreme Court to reverse the decades-old legal precedent finding pre-viability abortion to be protected under Montana’s right to privacy and have passed a slew of abortion restrictions under Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, who handily won reelection Tuesday night.
“Today Montanans voted overwhelmingly to defend reproductive freedom and enshrine in the state constitution the right to make and carry out their own personal decisions about pregnancy and abortion,” said Christopher Coburn, President of Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, in a Wednesday morning statement released by the campaign. “Ultimately, voters from across the political spectrum came together to protect access to abortion care, reproductive freedom, and personal privacy.”
As written, CI-128 would explicitly amend the Montana Constitution to include a right to make decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion. It states that the right “shall not be denied or burdened unless justified by a compelling government interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”
The initiative defines a government interest as “compelling” if it “clearly and convincingly addresses a medically acknowledged, bona fide health risk to a pregnant patient and does not infringe on the patient’s autonomous decision making.”
CI-128 defines “fetal viability” as the point in pregnancy when, “in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional and based on the particular facts of the case, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”
The initiative would allow state government to regulate abortion after fetal viability unless “in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional, is medically indicated to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.”
Additionally, CI-128 prohibits the government from penalizing or prosecuting a person based on their “actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes,” and extends the same protection to anyone who aids or assists another person “in exercising their right to make and carry out decisions about their pregnancy with their voluntary consent.”
MSRR received upwards of $15 million in donations supporting CI-128, largely from national political action committees and wealthy out-of-state donors.
That skew in funding has given rise to repeated attacks from CI-128 opponents, including the conservative Christian advocacy group the Montana Family Foundation, the Montana Catholic Conference and other anti-abortion groups. Opponents have also sought to cast CI-128 as extreme and a dramatic expansion of Montana’s existing protections for abortion access.
Leaders of the Montana Catholic Conference lamented the passage of the amendment in a Wednesday statement, partially attributing its victory to voter misinformation about CI-128’s possible ramifications.
“In honoring the dignity of each person, we strive to build a just society that cares for the most vulnerable, including women who need our support and unborn children who cannot speak for themselves,” the statement said. “Regardless of background, beliefs, or life circumstances, women will find compassion, guidance, and pathways to a hopeful future through any Catholic church in our state.”
Coburn told supporters gathered in Bozeman Tuesday that the process of getting CI-128 on the ballot “wasn’t easy at all.”
“Since we filed CI-128, anti-abortion politicians and activists in Montana have tried every trick in the book to block this amendment from the ballot. To block you from being able to vote on this amendment,” Coburn said.
Those challenges began in January when Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen found the proposed measure to be “legally insufficient” by grouping together multiple distinct legal questions about abortion in one amendment.
The Montana Supreme Court later ruled that Knudsen’s finding was incorrect and that the ballot issue could advance through the multistep process to appear on this fall’s ballot. When MSRR and Knudsen again clashed over how to summarize the proposal on petition gathering forms and to voters, the Montana Supreme Court drafted its own ballot issue statement in an effort to accurately represent the proposal’s contents.
Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen cleared the proposal’s supporters in April to begin collecting the requisite signatures to put CI-128 on the ballot. But in the following months, MSRR staffers and volunteers repeatedly clashed with anti-abortion groups and protesters, many of whom followed signature-gatherers around in an effort to deter voter support.
Conflict over the amendment again flared up in July when Jacobsen’s office decided to exclude registered voters who were listed as “inactive” from counting toward the signature threshold, reversing longstanding precedent.
Lawyers for MSRR and another group collecting signatures for ballot amendments CI-126 and CI-127 went to court to ask that the status quo remain in place and that voters on the “inactive” list be counted. State district court judge Mike Menahan of Helena sided with the plaintiffs in a temporary ruling later that month.
MSRR later submitted roughly 118,000 signatures collected from volunteer and paid signature gatherers, easily surpassing the required 60,359 statewide.
“Despite their best efforts, they really couldn’t kill her vibe,” Coburn said about CI-128 during Tuesday night remarks. The coalition of groups that made up MSRR, Coburn said, continuously worked “to make sure that voters know what’s actually on the ballot and what’s at stake this election.”
As of early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press had not called the outcomes for two other constitutional amendments, CI-126 and CI-127. The initiatives propose to remake Montana’s election system through open primaries and a majority-vote requirement for winners.
This story was updated on Nov. 6, 2024, to include a comment from the Montana Catholic Conference.
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