3 Months After Montanans Voted for Abortion Rights, GOP Wants to Criminalize Abortion Travel

While the bill includes a footnote supposedly barring the abortion patient from facing penalties, it simultaneously criminalizes anyone who “[transports] an unborn child”—a traveling pregnant person is automatically transporting their “unborn child.” So, the threat clearly still stands. For instance, in 2023, Pregnancy Justice warned that under fetal personhood, pregnant people can be charged with “kidnapping” their fetus if they travel across state lines without the consent of the fetus’ father.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which represents Democratic state lawmakers, condemned HB 609 this week as a direct violation of the very recent will of Montana voters. “Beyond attacking Montana voters who voted decisively to protect abortion rights, state Republicans are once again abusing state legislatures as a testing ground for their most extreme policies,” DLCC communications director Lauren Chou said in a statement shared with Jezebel. Chou warned that Republican state lawmakers are increasingly “focused on prosecuting women.” 

Anne Angus, a Montana woman who, in 2022, had an abortion 24 weeks into her pregnancy following a devastating fetal diagnosis, told Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti that “had a bill like this been law at the time, I wouldn’t just be a grieving mother, I’d be a felon.” In the first year after Dobbs, Pregnancy Justice tracked the most pregnancy-related criminal charges in a one-year period in the history of its tracking. Legislation like Montana’s HB 609 threatens to help break that record.

HB 609’s sponsor, state Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe (R), and the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they see the bill as contradictory to a clear mandate from Montana voters.

Multiple abortion-banned states have introduced abortion travel bills in the last couple of years, despite the right to interstate travel being very clearly protected by the Constitution. Nonetheless, in July, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to explicitly codify this right, citing their twisted, faux concerns that the bill was a backdoor to allowing abusers to “traffic” underage victims and coerce them to have abortions. Since 2023, Tennessee and Idaho have enacted so-called “abortion trafficking” bills that criminalize adults who help minors travel for abortion care without parental consent. Both are currently being challenged in court, and parts of Idaho’s law were scaled back by a federal judge in November. 

Similarly, several Texas counties have enacted ordinances that outlaw the use of county roads for abortion-related travel. Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel at the reproductive justice legal group If/When/How, told Jezebel in 2023 that while these ordinances seem difficult if not impossible to enforce, that’s ultimately secondary: Their purpose is “chaos and confusion,” which could prevent people from traveling or helping other travel for abortion care.

Montanans said they want abortion rights, but Republicans don’t care, and if anything, appear emboldened: Shortly after Election Day, Texas Right to Life declared that they view President Trump’s reelection as a mandate to ramp up their anti-abortion extremism. That line of thinking seems to be guiding anti-abortion lawmakers across the country.