Montana Abortion-Rights Opponents Renew Attempts At 'Personhood' Ballot Initiative

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 07 Jul 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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The Montana ProLife Coalition last week launched a campaign seeking a state ballot initiative that would propose defining "personhood" in the state constitution as "from the beginning of the biological development of that human being," the Great Falls Tribune reports. A required 48,674 signatures are needed to place the initiative on the November 2010 ballot. Abortion-rights opponents failed to collect enough signatures for a similar proposal last year. Former state Rep. Rick Jore, a member of the Constitution Party, on Wednesday submitted three versions of the proposal to the Montana Secretary of State's Office. Jore also authored last year's proposal.

Allyson Hagen, executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice Montana, said, "Whether or not they get it on the ballot, I think that the vast majority of Montanans are going to oppose an extreme initiative like this one." She added, "I think Montanans believe very strongly in the right to privacy and [that] the decisions regarding pregnancy should be between a woman and her doctor, not with the Legislature or the government."

Abortion-rights opponents last year tried and failed to put similar proposals before voters in Georgia and Oregon, and Colorado voters rejected a similar measure by a 3 to 1 margin. Hagen said that because the president supports abortion rights and Democrats have a majority in Congress, "antiabortion groups are looking to make movements in the states, feeling powerless at the federal level." Earlier this year, two bills (SB 406, SB 46) in the Montana Legislature that sought to grant constitutional rights to embryos failed to make it out of committee. The North Dakota Legislature recently rejected a similar proposal (Adams, Great Falls Tribune, 7/2).

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