Planned Parenthood endorses independent in Montana Senate race

Planned Parenthood’s political arm has endorsed the independent candidate in Montana’s U.S. Senate race, a rare departure by the organization that almost exclusively backs Democratic candidates. 

Montana is uniquely positioned as a state that has all-Republican elected officials at the state and national level, but just two years ago voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution by a 15-point margin. 

With the national GOP platform holding to an anti-abortion stance, groups focused on women’s reproductive healthcare have had two options in the Senate race for alternatives to Republican Kurt Alme — Democrat Alani Bankhead and independent Seth Bodnar. 

“Montana voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly chose to protect reproductive freedom in their own constitution,”  said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We know Seth Bodnar will meet this moment with the same clarity and represent the will of Montanans in the U.S. Senate.”

As of Friday, Bodnar is one of two candidates Planned Parenthood has endorsed who is not a registered Democratic candidate — Bill Hill, a nonpartisan in Alaska,  also received the endorsement. 

Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of Bodnar follows a recent poll by the Montana Free Press/Rutgers Eagleton showing him gaining ground in a three-way race, pulling 30% of the vote behind Alme’s 38%. Bankhead earned 16%.

In the 2022 Dobbs decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a longstanding precedent set in Roe v. Wade that said the constitution included the right to make a decision to have an abortion. The court had shifted to the right under President Trump’s first term, when he was able to appoint three justices to the bench. 

Non-GOP candidates see abortion as one way they can connect with voters in Montana. 

In a press statement, Bodnar used the endorsement to double down on his independent status and show his support for women’s decisions about their own bodies. 

“The government has no place in a Montanan’s doctor’s office, whether that government sits in Helena or Washington, D.C.,” Bodnar said in a statement. “Montanans already settled this at the ballot box, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents voted to protect it in our own constitution …That’s exactly the kind of decision I’ll always answer to Montanans on, not a party.”

Bankhead has also earned the support of national women’s rights groups. 

Earlier this week, her campaign announced an endorsement from the National Organization of Women Political Action Committee, which exclusively backs candidates with pro-choice policy positions. 

“NOW has been in this fight for 60 years, and they’ve never treated women’s rights as one issue,” Bankhead said in a statement to the Daily Montanan.  It’s reproductive freedom, it’s what you earn, it’s whether you can see a doctor, it’s whether you’re treated equally. That’s how I see it too.”

Kim Villanueva, chairperson for NOW PAC, said in a statement that this election “is personal” for women everywhere. 

“Our rights are being stripped away day by day, and the answer is simple — elect feminist candidates who won’t back down,” Villanueva said. 

Bodnar’s campaign used its endorsement to take additional shots at Bankhead, questioning her stance on reproductive rights and blasting associations she’s had with the conservative McLean Bible Church in Virginia and other conservative organizations in the past. 

“She belonged to a pro-MAGA megachurch whose pastor called abortion ‘a sin against God’ and who celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” said Kelly Webster, spokesperson for the Bodnar campaign. “While Bankhead may be comfortable with these far-right views, Montanans believe that a woman should have the right to make her own personal health care decisions without interference from politicians or anyone else.”

Bankhead’s policy stance as a candidate has always been pro-choice.

In previous interviews with the Daily Montanan, she said everyone is allowed the freedom of religion, but that she does not believe in bringing religion  into politics. 

Bankhead said she attended McLean Bible Church while stationed in Washington D.C., until 2017.

Lon Solomon, who was the pastor at the time, has a sermon on his website titled “Abortion: the American holocaust,” but Bankhead said she never heard him preach any “anti-abortion rhetoric,” while attending the church. 

“I would never have gone to a church like that,” she told the Daily Montanan. “All I heard from him was to do the right thing.”

Bankhead said she is personally pro-choice, and her work with sex trafficking victims while in the military has given her a front row seat to the importance of allowing women to have agency over their bodies.