Planned Parenthood Challenges New Law Montana Requires 24-Hour Waiting Period For Abortions

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has filed a lawsuit challenging Montana’s new 24-hour waiting period for abortions, contending it violates the constitutional rights of both women and their doctors.

The suit was filed in state District Court in Helena on Monday on behalf of clinics in Missoula, Billings, Helena and Great Falls and two of their doctors, Clayton McCracken of Billings and Douglas Webber of Missoula.

District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock scheduled a hearing next Tuesday on Planned Parenthood’s request for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law, which takes effect July 1. An injunction would block the law while a full trial on the merits of the suit is under way.

The law was passed by the Montana Legislature earlier this year.

It requires a doctor performing an abortion to give detailed, statespecified information about abortion to the patient. The abortion then cannot take place for at least 24 hours. A doctor violating the law faces criminal penalties and civil liability.

Supporters argue that women must be given information and then be allowed to consider it and give informed consent to an abortion. They characterize the bill as a medical right-to-know bill, not an antiabortion bill.

But the suit contends such reasoning is disingenuous because standard medical practice requires doctors to ensure that patients give informed consent to any treatment.

The practical effect of the new law is to erect “an enormous hurdle for many women, especially our patients, to surmount” to obtain an abortion, said Deborah Frandsen, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Missoula. “It is especially onerous for poor, rural and young women. …

“This is the type of law that, on its surface, sounds just fine,” she said. “It’s not until you speak to the women whom it will affect that you realize what a burden it will be.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of waitingperiod abortion laws. But the Montana suit is based on the Montana Constitution, which explicitly guarantees the privacy rights of Montanans. There is no such provision in the U.S. Constitution.

Poorer rural women in Montana are particularly affected because of the relative scarcity of doctors willing to perform abortions, the suit argues.