Missoula advocates urge opposition to House Bill 365 banning intact D&E procedure
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Summary
Speakers at a Missoula community conversation warned that House Bill 365 would criminalize a rare late‑term abortion procedure, impose heavy penalties on providers and lack a health exception; advocates urged testimony at a Helena hearing.
Missoula advocates urged local residents to oppose House Bill 365, a proposed state ban on an intact dilation-and-evacuation procedure commonly referred to in advocacy discussion as a late‑term abortion procedure. Gail Gucci, board president of Montana NARAL, told the meeting that HB 365 “is incorrectly named” and that the bill would ban a procedure used rarely and “only used in extreme and tragic cases where the life and health of the mother is at risk and or there are severe fetal anomalies.”
Advocates said the bill would make the procedure a criminal act for medical providers, imposing fines and prison terms and lacking a health‑of‑the‑mother exception. Gucci said the bill’s criminal penalties include a fine she described as $50,000 and up to 10 years in prison for providers. She also said Montana already prohibits abortion on a viable fetus except when the mother’s health is at risk and that this bill’s narrower wording—she said it excepts only death—would be “too narrow.”
The Missoula Human Rights Network hosted the event as part of a series of community conversations on legislation. Gucci called attention to a legislative hearing scheduled in Helena and encouraged attendance and written testimony; she said the hearing on HB 365 was set for “tomorrow at 8 a.m. in Helena” and that organizers planned a bus leaving Missoula at 5:30 a.m. for those who wanted to testify.
Discussion at the meeting emphasized that the intact D&E procedure is rarely used nationwide—Gucci said it is performed about 600 times a year across the country—and that medical providers perform it in extreme cases. Gucci added, “This is a decision, extremely private, painful decision to be made by the woman and her health care provider,” and argued legislators lack medical expertise to write rules on such procedures.
Gucci also described additional bills advocates were watching but said they had not yet been introduced: an “unborn child abuse” proposal aimed at punishing pregnant people for substance use and a broad parental‑rights bill that could restrict minors’ access to sexual‑health information and services. She asked attendees to reserve detailed questions for small‑group discussions and offered to coordinate testimony and travel for the Helena hearing.
