An advocacy group in Montana has put up 10 billboards across the state, including next to the Idaho border, letting people know abortions and contraception are still legal there.
One billboard shows a father and a mother, with their two kids, wearing cowboy hats and looking towards a mountain range. On it a message reads “Our Freedom is precious,” another “Reproductive Freedom belongs to us all.”
One billboard is located in Stevensville, a small town between Missoula and the Idaho border. Montanans for Choice Director Nicole Smith said the goal of the campaign was to let people know abortions in the region are still available.
“Right now Montana is a bit of a sea of access in our region, with Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota all enacting almost total abortion bans,” she said. “So we want our neighbors from those surrounding states and folks from really across the country to know that they're welcome here.”
In 2023, the Montana legislature passed nine anti-abortion laws but lawsuits have prevented them from going into effect. This, Smith said, has left a lot of people confused on whether they can still get abortions in the state. The billboard, digital and print campaign by the group seeks to combat misinformation, especially in remote areas, she added.
“Our message is simple,” Smith said. “Just trying to say, ‘listen, you have really no barriers in your way other, unfortunately, than geography in Montana.’"
“We really wanted to get billboards out into rural communities in Montana,” she added. “That was a big priority of ours. We really want people in rural communities to feel like they're a part of this movement and to see themselves in their communities reflected in our campaign."
Similar campaigns have popped up across the country since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Abortion rights vary widely from one state to another, and many laws enacted since are under litigation.
In 2023, Planned Parenthood put up billboards in Idaho informing residents they could travel to get abortions. Under Idaho Code, physicians are banned from providing abortions except in narrow circumstances but it is not illegal for Idahoans to go out-of-state to seek care.
