Massachusetts governor passes controversial abortion bill allowing terminations up to birth
Abortion will now be allowed at any time before birth in Massachusetts.
Democratic Governor Maura Healey signed away the state’s abortion limits on Monday, permitting it at any point during the 40-week gestation cycle.
Previously, the Bay State had allowed abortion only up until 24 weeks.
Healey said the move would protect pregnant women suffering from medical complications and gave her state the ‘strongest abortion protections in the country.’
Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll said it was a ‘step forward’ in ensuring patients could access the ‘high-quality reproductive healthcare they deserve.’
But critics blasted the move as ‘celebrating the extermination of unwanted humans’, and said Massachusetts had ‘crossed a line.’
Trump-appointed United States Department of Agriculture director Bruce LeVell said on X: ‘Massachusetts just crossed a line. This is not healthcare. This is the destruction of the most vulnerable. Pro-life must win everywhere. Pray for the kids.’
Massachusetts now becomes the tenth state to remove all abortion limits in the US.
Governor Maura Healey is pictured above after signing the bill at a press conference on Monday
The other states with no abortion limits are Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont, alongside the District of Columbia.
Nationwide 13 states have total abortion bans, while 12 ban abortion at viability, or when a fetus is able to survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks gestation.
In Europe, most countries generally permit abortion before 12 weeks in gestation. In the UK, abortion is permitted up to 24 weeks.
Signing the law – dubbed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act – Healey said: ‘I’ve heard heartbreaking stories from women and families who were preparing to welcome a healthy baby into their family, only to receive devastating news later in pregnancy.
‘Instead of being able to rely on the doctors they knew and trusted at home, they were forced to travel hundreds of miles and pay out of their pockets while navigating unimaginable grief.
‘That should never happen in Massachusetts. This law continues our efforts to have the strongest abortion protections in the country because in Massachusetts, we believe health care decisions should be made between women and their doctors.’
About 1.1 million abortions are carried out in the US every year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a leading New York-based research organization for sexual health.
Almost all took place before week 10 of pregnancy.
The above graph shows the number of abortions recorded in the country by year
After this point, abortions are far less common. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows only one percent of abortions are carried out at 21 weeks or later.
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco say there are two main reasons that abortions happen much later in pregnancy.
The first is the discovery of a previously undiagnosed medical condition that suggests a newborn may not survive long outside the womb. Some conditions, such as severe spina bifida, when the spine doesn’t form properly, or a severe congenital heart defect, are not detected until much later in pregnancy.
The other is that a woman has faced barriers to receiving an abortion earlier, such as homelessness or lack of funds to travel out of state to seek an abortion elsewhere.
At a press conference announcing the lifting of the restrictions, she added: ‘The bottom line for people in Massachusetts, if you care about women’s health, if you care about making sure that women are able to access the healthcare that they need in consultation with their doctors, should be clear.
‘I stand with women. My opponents do not.’
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life, which campaigns to stop abortion, said: ‘We must do all we can to turn the page on America’s ugly chapter of late-term abortion.’
Republican Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett blasted the move, posting on X, ‘Jesus wept.’
The vast majority of abortions in the US happen before 10 weeks gestation, data suggests, using the prescription drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol
Some supporters of abortion also queried the move.
One woman wrote on X: ‘I’m Pro-Choice. I also refuse to participate in the increasingly grotesque fiction that being pro-choice requires us to celebrate abortion, sanitize what it actually entails, or pretend there should be no moral line anywhere.
‘You can be pro-choice and still say that somewhere between an early pregnancy and a pregnancy approaching birth, the moral equation changes.’
The bill is scheduled to take effect in 90 days, overturning all limits on abortion in the state.
States have been setting their own limits for abortion since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, which had guaranteed the right to an abortion in any state.
The US is now criss-crossed with a patchwork of abortion restrictions, with some states allowing them almost at any time while others have blocked them completely.
