THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD PROBLEM

Is the group too cautious and corporate, forcing independent abortion providers to take the biggest risks?

- EYAL PRESS

Like many places in America where abortions are performed, the Blue Mountain Clinic, in Missoula, Montana, has faced a litany of threats. Protesters have routinely harassed patients since the facility opened, in the late seventies. In 1993, a firebomb gutted the premises. The clinic eventually reopened at a new location, in a building fortified with bulletproof windows and thick concrete walls. On June 24th of last year, staff members gathered there to console one another following a different sort of attack: the Supreme Court had just issued a final ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. Working at an abortion clinic requires stoicism and resolve, yet the employees felt overcome. “We all just had a good cry,” Nicole Smith, Blue Mountain’s executive director, recalled.

As disheartened as Smith and her co-workers were, they also had reason to feel fortunate, at least compared with peers elsewhere. Soon after Dobbs was announced, fourteen states began enforcing sweeping new bans on abortion. Had the matter been left to the Republican Party in Montana—which holds a super-majority in the state legislature and in 2022 adopted a platform calling for a prohibition on abortion—the Blue Mountain Clinic would have encountered similar restrictions. But in 1999 the Montana Supreme Court had ruled that the right to privacy inscribed in the state constitution applied to medical judgments affecting bodily integrity, including the decision to terminate a pregnancy. This legal backstop insured that clinics like Smith’s could continue operating even if the state legislature passed regressive new laws.