More than 250 Montana health care providers have signed a letter in support of protecting abortion access in the upcoming election.
Carey Downey, a family medicine physician in Butte, says Montanans already face a shortage of health care workers and other barriers to accessing care.
“It never ceases to shock me how underserved and how significant poverty affects their health care,” said Downey
Downey was among the providers who signed the letter in support of a proposed initiative to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution – CI-128. The letter was organized by the national advocacy group Committee to Protect Health Care.
During a press conference Thursday, Downey pointed to studies that show pregnant patients and women living in states that have enacted abortion bans have poorer health outcomes.
Abortion will remain accessible in Montana if the initiative fails, unless the state supreme court overturns legal precedent protecting it.
Anti-abortion opponents say the initiative relies too heavily on health care providers “subjective judgment.” They point to language that allows for abortion post-viability when medically indicated, and prevents burdening abortion access pre-viability. They say those terms are too vague.
Trent Taylor, a family medicine physician in Missoula, says health care providers know those terms well and where to draw the line.
“I think that it is a very good guideline for where we’re at currently with medical reproductive technology and it will serve us for many years to come,” said Taylor.
Taylor said technological advances in care could move the needle in a few decades, and that the language allows for flexibility in those guidelines.
Health care advocacy associations based in Montana have not taken official stances on the ballot issue. That includes the Montana Medical Association, the Montana Hospital Association and the Montana chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
