For years, Democrats and abortion-rights advocates have insisted Republicans were exaggerating when they warned that some on the Left support legal abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (supposedly a Catholic) just made that talking point considerably harder to sell.
Healey, a Democrat, signed legislation Monday eliminating the previous restrictions in Massachusetts on abortions after 24 weeks and replacing them with a remarkably broad standard: an abortion may be performed by a physician when it is “based upon the professional judgment of the physician.”
In other words, the law itself contains no 24-week, 30-week, 36-week, or even 39-week cutoff.
Previously, Massachusetts allowed abortions after 24 weeks when necessary to protect the patient’s life or physical or mental health, or in cases of lethal or grave fetal diagnoses. The new law removes those specific conditions and instead relies on a physician’s professional judgment. That distinction matters.
It does not mean Massachusetts women will suddenly begin routinely seeking abortions days before their due dates. Abortions that late in pregnancy are uncommon. But we’re talking about what the law now allows. The new statute contains no gestational limit prohibiting an abortion at full term. And that leaves abortion opponents with a fairly obvious response: Republicans weren’t imagining the policy debate after all.
Critics have spent years hearing that “abortion until birth” was nothing more than conservative fearmongering. Massachusetts has now enacted a law under which abortion remains legally available throughout pregnancy. What Democrats can’t credibly say anymore is that nobody supports laws allowing abortion that late in pregnancy. Massachusetts just put one on the books.