Massachusetts governor signs bill allowing abortions throughout all nine months
Pro-life leaders condemned the measure as “egregious,” warning that it strips unborn children of their final legal protections and exposes them to abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, signed a law Aug. 10 that removes virtually all remaining restrictions on late-term abortions in the state, allowing abortion up to the moment of birth based on a physician’s judgment.
The measure, titled the “Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act,” repeals the previous statutory restrictions on abortions at or after 24 weeks of pregnancy except in cases involving the mother’s life or health or certain severe fetal diagnoses. Under the new law, an abortion may be done at any stage “based upon the professional judgment of a physician.” It is scheduled to take effect Nov. 8, 90 days after Healey signed it.
At an Aug. 10 press conference, Healey said the law is intended to allow families with complications late in pregnancy to abort their babies in Massachusetts rather than traveling to another state.
“Today, mothers and fathers and families who experience these devastating diagnoses — and they are devastating, heartbreaking — now they’ll be able to make their own choices,” she added.
According to FOX News, Massachusetts joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., in removing gestational age limits on abortion.
Pro-life leaders immediately condemned the law as a radical abandonment of legal protections for unborn children. Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, said the law “erased the final protections for unborn children who can feel pain and who could survive outside the womb” in an Aug. 10 statement.
“At the very stage when premature babies are receiving lifesaving care in neonatal intensive care units, Massachusetts will permit abortionists to end the lives of children of the same age — and even older,” Tobias added. “That is not compassion, and it is not health care.”
In an Aug. 10 statement, Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser called the law “egregious” and warned that it would increase the number of unborn Americans “barbarically dismembered limb by limb.” The organization said second- and third-trimester abortions are generally done by the dismemberment of the baby or by inducing labor, which can sometimes result in a live birth.
“The GOP must abandon the ‘leave it to the states’ position — a stance that permits egregious late-term abortion laws like this one — and advance national protections for unborn children,” Dannenfelser said. “Without a minimum national standard, the United States remains 1 of only 8 countries worldwide that allows abortion at any point in pregnancy.”
According to a 2024 Charlotte Lozier Institute study cited by SBA Pro-Life America, 46 of 50 European countries limit abortion after 15 weeks.
Dannenfelser concluded, “We must do all we can to turn the page on America’s ugly chapter of late-term abortion.”
