The significance of the facility is evidenced by its isolation: The next-closest abortion clinic is a two-and-a-half-hour drive away in Missoula. (All Families also provides additional health services beyond abortion care.) In its first year, Weems said, All Families provided around 100 abortions; in 2023, it provided nearly 400 abortions, around three-quarters of which were medication abortions. For patients from neighboring states, Weems instructs them to cross the border into Montana and pick up the medication at a local post office.
This is also convenient for patients from more remote parts of Montana—44 percent of the state’s population live in rural areas—who may need to travel to a faraway P.O. box to pick up the mailed medication. Eastern Montana is a desert for abortion access, with some residents a nine-hour drive or more from the closest clinic. Many of Weems’s patients may already have children at home or be working full-time, she said.
“It just becomes totally untenable for them to be able to take that time off to be able to travel for abortion, and so medication abortion by mail has just really revolutionized access,” she continued. In 2021, the Montana state legislature passed laws aiming to severely limit access to this method, by prohibiting the prescription of medication abortions via telehealth services, requiring a 24-hour waiting period for medication abortions, and mandating an ultrasound before providing an abortion. These laws were struck down by the state Supreme Court, upholding a 1999 precedent that the Montana Constitution’s right to privacy allows for access to abortion.
