BOZEMAN — Kicking off a series of events around the state, the head of Planned Parenthood’s national political arm appeared at a fundraiser here with Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester on Thursday night to rally support both for the incumbent’s high-profile re-election bid and an abortion ballot measure Montanans will weigh in on this November.

Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, told Bozemanites that re-electing Tester and turning out for Constitutional Initiative 128 was critical.

“The path to freedom runs right through Montana. I am here because I know the path to freedom runs right through Jon Tester,” McGill Johnson said.

Tester is locked in a re-election battle against Republican newcomer Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who founded an aerial firefighting company in Belgrade. The race is viewed as pivotal to which party will control the U.S. Senate, as Tester is the lone statewide Democrat and running in state former Republican President Donald Trump won by double digits twice.

Taking the stage, Tester said the 2022 overturning of Roe with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which erased the right to access an abortion at the federal level, was the “biggest reduction of freedom in my lifetime and yours too.”

In Montana abortion is protected by a 1999 state Supreme Court decision known as Armstrong that hinges on the Montana Constitution’s privacy provision. But Republicans who dominate the state Legislature and hold the governor’s office have passed multiple bills to limit access to the procedure. Many of those laws, including a ban on the procedure after 20 weeks, have been overturned by the courts. Still, GOP lawmakers including Gov. Greg Gianforte have asked the state’s high court to reconsider Armstrong.

CI-128 would codify the right to access a pre-viability abortion. Supporters gathered more than twice the number of required signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot, but Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office said the signatures of registered but inactive voters did not count. A judge disagreed with that determination and Jacobsen eventually qualified the measure just last month.

“If there’s one thing that makes you a Montanan, it’s your love of freedom. You don’t want a politician or bureaucrat or judge telling you, especially if you’re a woman, what health care decision you’re going to make,” Tester said.

Tester told the room that “elections matter,” and then pivoted to his race, noting there were just 61 days before the Nov. 5 election, “not that I’m counting.”

“I’ve never had a wide margin of victory and it ain't gonna happen this time either,” Tester said, adding he expects his race to be called the morning after Election Day. “ ... It’s going to be fine for me as long as I win.”

McGill Johnson told the crowd that Tester’s Republican opponent Sheehy would work to limit access to abortion while the senator would work to ensure protections.

“The opposition loves him, the opposition wants him to be in play because they have an agenda to go farther than where we are right now,” McGill Johnson said, raising concerns about a national ban on abortions, denying access to in vitro fertilization and contraception and more.

In a statement Thursday night, a Sheehy spokesperson said: "As parents to four beautiful kids, Tim and Carmen are proudly pro-life and believe there should be exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. They believe in helping bring more life into this world and their charitable giving has expanded access to provide critical care to at-risk babies and they also support IVF as a path for Montana families to grow and thrive when they struggle to conceive naturally, like his brother and sister-in-law who battled infertility."

The national GOP platform says that abortion laws should be left to the states and that IVF and access to birth control should be protected. That marked a shift in the party's stance, as polling nationally shows support for abortion access nationwide. Still, Democrats raise concerns that some members of the party have shown support for measures beyond what the platform lays out.

McGill Johnson said Republicans are focused on “power and control.”

“Our vision … is to make sure that abortion is not only unquestionable, it is undeniable and that our bodies are ungovernable,” McGill Johnson said.

It’s expected that CI-128 could excite Democrats to turn out this fall, which would be critical to Tester’s campaign. Polling released by AARP on Thursday showed that while Tester is trailing Sheehy by 8 points, outside the 4-point margin of error, he is outperforming Sheehy among younger voters, though that group is less reliable to show up to the polls, and the incumbent has Democrats locked down.

Teri Seth, who identifies as in independent voter, said after the rally that both CI-128 and re-electing Tester were important in this election.

“Women and families need to be able to make reproductive choices,” Seth said.

Seth was supporting Tester because “he looks out for Montanans and I believe he looks out for working people.” Seth said Tester's ability to work with Republicans was also appealing.

“If you don’t have people that work across party lines, then you don’t have an effective democracy,” Seth said.

Seth added that Tester preserving Democrats' control of the Senate was vital when it comes to appointing U.S. Supreme Court justices.

“The Supreme Court is really out of balance right now, so it’s important that Tester gets in so he can help select good judges,” Seth said.

— Montana State News Bureau reporter Carly Graf contributed to this story.