After two years of Montana Democrats gleefully and vigorously advocating for the forced-masking and forced-vaccination of their fellow Montanans, their sudden defense of “health privacy” in service of codifying abortion into Montana law through judicial activism exposes not only their hypocrisy, but their ignorance.

Prominent Montana Democrats including former elected Democrats and Democrat-aligned non-profits have recently begun unashamedly defending the right to health privacy across their social media channels and sharing campaign messaging telling Montanans that now, all of a sudden, it’s actually citizens who control their bodies and the government should not be involved in their medical decisions. A total about-face from their behavior over the past two years.

Monica Tranel, climate change lawyer and Democrat candidate for US House in Montana’s 1st Congressional District, is running against former Montana US House Representative Republican Ryan Zinke. Tranel has been dogged about privacy in her campaigning, pushing a defense of privacy in her campaign messaging in service of guaranteeing abortion. In a recent Tweet, Tranel asked of Zinke, “Does he support gov’t [sic] surveillance over medical decisions?”

A good question. Does Monica Tranel? Tranel and Democrats sudden concern about surveillance of medical decisions did not extend to attendees of Tranel’s campaign events. At an outdoor campaign event in September of 2021 at Depot Park in Whitefish, attendees who were unvaccinated had to wear masks or stay home. So much for “health privacy.”

Montana Senator Jon Tester is also out virtue signaling for abortion, handwringing about a future where medical decisions are coerced by the federal government.

Senator Tester told FOX Business host Neil Cavuto in December of last year that he supported forced vaccinations for medical workers. Tester said that private businesses should get relief from vaccine mandates, a policy already codified by Montana Republicans in HB-702, but had no qualms with forcing healthcare workers.

“On the other side,“ Tester said regarding vaccine mandates, “there are others—like the health care folks who need to get vaccinated. I’m not opposed to that at all. In fact, I think it’s the right thing to do.” During statewide protests against Federal vaccine mandates from Montana healthcare workers last November, Tester was nowhere to be found.

Former Montana House member and Democrat partisan Reilly Neill has been one of the most vocal Democrats shaming, naming, and blaming unvaccinated people for their private healthcare decisions, going so far as to even say that the Biden Administration should ban unvaccinated Americans from receiving emergency medical care by fiat.

Neill is the perfect distillation of Montana Democrats, being willing to say out loud what more strategic Democrats won’t dare say in public, but still feel in their hearts: Montanans not willing to submit to federal, state, or local health mandates deserve the stick until they learn how to fall in line.

Neill has been vociferous in her defense of women’s privacy. Not when it comes to being forced to take a vaccine or wear a mask, however, but when it comes to a woman deciding whether or not to terminate the life of a child that survives abortion.

“No one wants a zealot telling them what they can do in their private lives,” Neill explains. Unless, of course, that zealot is Reilly Neill.

There are dozens of other Montana Democrats who suddenly support health privacy despite previous hypocritical stances denying Montanans bodily autonomy. That includes former Lieutenant Governor Mike Cooney and House member Ellie Hill-Boldman who falsely hyped up COVID deaths in service of coercing masks and vaccinations, sharing misinformation about “mobile morgues.”

“Non-partisan” voter-registration-trafficking non-profit Forward Montana and “green decoy” Montana Conservation Voters have also been boosting the right to privacy argument elevating Democrats defense of abortion. Both of these Democrat-aligned propaganda machines were nowhere to be found when citizens had their private health decisions coerced and manipulated by the Federal government, local health departments, and former Gov. Steve Bullock.

All this rhetoric from Democrats and their propaganda machines in Montana clearly signals that Montana Democrats are ready to defend the killing of children prior to their birth in the same way they win all their battles; by using the court.

The Montana Democrats are sure to bring legal challenges using the Montana Constitution’s “Right of privacy” clause against any attempt to ban the practice by the representative will of the people. Rather than say they support abortion during campaigning, Democrats are trying to manipulate the public by couching their defense in “privacy,” suddenly becoming strict constitutionalists (for the Montana Constitution).

Again, the the loud Democrats give up the party’s game: “Abortion for all” does not “resonate“ for Montanans, Democrats say. Laundering their efforts to guarantee abortion under the guise of privacy? That does. Or will it?

What were Democrats doing when the rights of Montana parents to make their own medical decisions for their family were violated by school boards across Montana? They were demanding others mask up, defending forced-masking at school board meetings, and appealing to pseudo-science and authority rather than actual science and real-world data.

Montana Democrats’ sudden claims that they respect the health privacy of other Montanans falls flat on its face. Their attempt to codify abortion through this strategy will fail. Not only because Montanans see their blatant hypocrisy and will deny them more legislative power, but because the Dobb’s case that overturned Roe and Casey iterated that the defense of killing a child before birth does not meet the standard of privacy due to another interested and non-consenting party, the child being killed, being involved.

Sherif Gergis summarizes succinctly in SCOTUS Blog:

Dobbs also grants that contraception, etc., may be integral to a broader historical right — to privacy or autonomy. But abortion is not, says Dobbs, because it takes fetal life. Why is this doctrinally relevant? The idea, developed here, may be that privacy and autonomy guard a sphere over which the individual is sovereign, and which ends where harm to others begins: These rights cover acts that directly affect no one else, or just consenting adults (with one ultimately irrelevant exception). But abortion directly harms a non-consenting party — or rather, it’s rational, and so permissible, for states to think so. This external impact creates a break, a discontinuity, that prevents abortion from being assimilated to any deeply rooted privacy or autonomy right. Thus, to be protected anyway, abortion would have to be itself deeply rooted, but it isn’t.

If Democrats do not believe Montanans have a right to health privacy when it comes to forced-vaccinations and forced-masking, what defense will they have when the claim that privacy protects doctors or women who kill their unborn children is tossed because the compelling interest and right to life of an unborn human child is upheld?

They may win with activist liberal judges in Montana’s Supreme and District Courts. Not only have the judges overruled the state health department, allowing people to change the sex on their birth certificate with a simple notarized letter, and parents, saying school boards can force masks on their children, but Friday, they also overturned nearly all of the legislatures new election integrity laws passed by representatives in the 2021 legislative session, ruling the new laws unconstitutional. Montana Democrats can once again pay for mail-in ballots, generate Election Day voter registrations as needed, and ignore new voter ID requirements for students.

Unless, of course, conservatives fail to fight the Democrats and match them suit-for-suit in their ceaseless efforts to use lawfare to shoehorn their priorities against the representative will of the people, Democrats will ultimately fail on abortion, as the basis for their argument has already been rendered moot by the highest court in the land.

Do you know a single Montana Democrat who has apologized for the overreach and the violations of health privacy in the government response to COVID-19?

Montana Democrats are authoritarians and hypocrites. Voters should remember that when they cast their ballot (in person, on Election Day) in November.