Criminal Abortion ‘Trafficking’ Bill Gets Hearing Before First Committee

Montana lawmakers are considering a bill that would open pregnant patients up to a felony charge for obtaining what the legislation calls an “illegal” abortion within or outside of the state and criminally penalize anyone who assists them.

Advocates for House Bill 609 say the legislation is intended to target abortions that occur after the point of viability and are not deemed necessary to preserve the life or health of the pregnant person. Proponents say that type of government regulation is permitted under Constitutional Initiative 128, the abortion rights amendment Montana voters approved in November.

“Montana may allow abortion, but that does not mean that we allow an unchecked abortion industry to operate in the shadows,” said Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, R-Billings, the bill sponsor, speaking Wednesday to lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s about enforcing the laws that still exist in our state.”

The bill itself does not define what would count as an illegal abortion procedure. CI-128, which will take effect this summer, defines 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.”

Testimony from HB 609’s two supporters was contrasted by comments from more than two dozen opponents. 

Many testified that the bill would criminalize women who require abortions later in pregnancy for complex fetal anomalies. 

Sarah Kries, a Missoula resident, testified that she had to travel out of state for an abortion near the 24-week mark in her pregnancy after learning that her fetus had a lethal form of skeletal dysplasia.

“My husband and I needed to immediately travel to Portland,” Kries said. “I was and am incredibly traumatized by all of this. And to be criminalized on top of this would have been unfathomable.”

Abortion bills debated and passed in recent sessions of the Montana Legislature have rarely applied criminal penalties to pregnant women and have been widely blocked in state courts. HB 609 proposes the felony apply to the pregnant individual, as well as anyone who “purposely or knowingly transports or aids or assists another person in transporting an unborn child … with the intent to obtain an abortion that is illegal in this state.”

The legislation was originally requested by freshman Rep. Lukas Schubert, R-Kalispell. In public emails to a legislative attorney tasked with writing the bill, Schubert requested multiple times that HB 609’s criminal provisions apply to the pregnant person.

“Looks good but yes, let’s make it so that it applies to the pregnant woman if she travels out of state to kill her child through abortion if that abortion is illegal in Montana,” Schubert wrote in a January email, responding to an early draft. The communication is part of the bill’s publically available drafting file.

During the Wednesday hearing, several opponents’ testimony dwelled on that provision.

“As I understand it, if my wife were to become pregnant and want an abortion and I supported her, which of course I would, and we were to travel within or out of the state of Montana, we would both be felons and labeled traffickers, which is pretty amazing,” said David Wall, a Missoula resident.

Other opponents included Montana clinics and health centers that provide abortions, the Montana Medical Association and the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. All of those groups said they feared being swept up in the bill’s criminal scope of penalties for anyone who “aids or assists” in transport for an abortion.

Other commenters raised frustrations that the bill had been brought at all after CI-128 was passed by a 16-percentage-point margin. Some opponents called the bill “disappointing” and said it appeared to contradict the will of voters.

But Derek Oestreicher, the chief legal counsel with the conservative Christian advocacy group the Montana Family Foundation, said the bill fit within the bounds of the constitutional amendment.

“There’s no question it’s broadly written. But it does leave some room for the state to regulate and prohibit certain abortion trafficking activities,” Oestreicher testified to committee members. “The state does have a compelling interest in the protection of life after viability under the language of CI-128. So if there is no bonafide health risk and no infringement of autonomous decision making, the state can regulate abortion.”

The committee has not yet voted on the bill. 

Lawmakers voted Wednesday to table another proposal from Seekins-Crowe, at her request. House Bill 555, which received a Tuesday hearing, would have added restrictions to medication abortions. 

The sponsor did not immediately reply to a request for comment about why she asked for HB 555 to be tabled.

Another bill with similar language, Senate Bill 479, is pending in the Senate. It had not been scheduled for a hearing as of early Wednesday afternoon. 

In early February, the House Judiciary Committee also voted to pass a constitutional amendment to define personhood as beginning at the moment of conception.

As a constitutional amendment, the bill requires support from two-thirds of the entire Legislature in order to advance and appear on the ballot in November 2026. That bill, House Bill 316, has not yet been scheduled for a vote on the House floor.

This story originally appeared in the Montana Free Press, which can be found online at montanafreepress.org.