Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed legislation eliminating the state's 24-week abortion limit and permitting the procedure through all nine months of pregnancy, a move pro-life advocates say puts America further outside the global mainstream.
Healey, a Democrat, signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act on Monday, making Massachusetts the tenth state, along with the District of Columbia, to strip gestational age restrictions from its abortion laws. The bill, numbered H.5595, replaces a longstanding framework that generally prohibited abortions after 24 weeks except in limited circumstances, such as lethal fetal anomalies or serious risk to the mother's health. Under the new law, doctors alone decide whether to perform an abortion later in pregnancy, Fox News Digital reported. No gestational ceiling remains.
The law takes effect in 90 days. Health care workers who perform late-term abortions will no longer face legal penalties under the state's previous restrictions, a provision that hands the medical profession broad discretion with no statutory upper bound.
At the signing, Healey cast the legislation as a direct response to the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and to what she described as ongoing efforts by Republicans in Congress and President Trump to roll back abortion access nationwide.
Healey told reporters:
"We believe that health care decisions should be made between women and families and their doctors, not politicians."
She went further, pledging that abortion would "remain safe," "remain legal," and "remain accessible" in Massachusetts regardless of what happens at the federal level.
"I promise that no matter what Donald Trump or Republicans in Congress or the Supreme Court does, we're going to continue to make sure that women and families have access to the health care that they need, right here in Massachusetts."
And she drew a sharp partisan line: "I stand with women. My opponents do not."
That framing, medical decisions belong to doctors, not legislators, has become the standard Democratic argument on abortion. But it sidesteps the central objection raised by critics: that removing every gestational limit means a viable, healthy baby can legally be aborted in the final weeks of pregnancy if a single physician agrees.
Republican state Rep. Alyson Sullivan-Almeida challenged Healey's framing directly. She argued that the bill's reach extends far beyond rare medical emergencies:
"The precedent that we're setting is that a mother can get an abortion up until the moment of birth for a healthy, viable baby."
The previous Massachusetts law had attempted to draw that line. Abortions after 24 weeks, roughly the point of fetal viability, were permitted only under a specific list of qualifying conditions, including lethal fetal anomaly, risk to maternal health, or fetal non-viability. The new law replaces that list with open-ended physician discretion.
Supporters of the bill argued the old framework was not working as intended. AP News reported that hospitals had turned away women who qualified for late-term abortions under existing law, including one case involving a fetus that had suffered a stroke and was unlikely to survive. Backers said the legal complexity surrounding the old exceptions made providers reluctant to act, even in clear-cut situations.
That is a real problem. But the legislative fix Massachusetts chose was not to clarify the exceptions or streamline the process. It was to erase every limit entirely.
The bill passed the Democrat-controlled Massachusetts House on July 22 and cleared the state Senate on July 31, Just the News reported. Specific vote counts were not available in the reporting, but the bill's swift passage through both chambers reflected the party's overwhelming majorities in the statehouse. Healey's signature was widely expected.
One of the bill's sponsors, state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, defended the measure in familiar terms: "Medical decisions belong between patients and their doctors, not the Legislature."
Opponents countered that taxpayers will now fund late-term abortions with no gestational restriction. Kelsey Pritchard of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called the bill "very extreme, legalizing abortion on demand until birth, paid for by taxpayers."
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, issued a statement condemning the signing and calling on the Republican Party to abandon its "leave it to the states" posture on abortion.
"It should shock the conscience that tens of thousands of unborn Americans are barbarically dismembered limb by limb and torn apart every single year. Sadly, that number will only increase with Gov. Healey's approval of the Abortion Up Until Birth Bill."
Dannenfelser argued that without a minimum national standard, the United States remains one of only eight countries worldwide that allows abortion at any point in pregnancy. The others on SBA Pro-Life America's list: Australia, Canada, China, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, South Korea, and Vietnam.
"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."
Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, raised a different concern about the bill's practical effects on women themselves: "While this legislation prioritizes access, it does not prioritize a woman's safety."
The Washington Examiner reported that approximately 8% of abortions performed in the United States, roughly 88,000 per year, occur in the second trimester or later. That figure predates the Massachusetts law. Critics argue the number will grow as more states remove gestational limits and the legal and cultural stigma around late-term procedures fades.
Massachusetts now joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia in imposing no gestational age limits on abortion. That is eleven jurisdictions where a physician's professional judgment is the only check on how late an abortion can occur.
The trend is moving in one direction. Since the Supreme Court returned abortion policy to the states in 2022, Democratic-controlled legislatures have not simply preserved existing access. They have expanded it, in several cases eliminating every statutory guardrail that once existed.
Healey's signing fits that pattern. The stated justification, that hospitals were turning away women in genuine medical crises, identified a narrow problem. The solution Massachusetts adopted was not narrow at all. It removed every gestational restriction on the books and replaced a defined set of qualifying conditions with unbounded physician discretion, covering not just emergencies but elective procedures at any stage of pregnancy.
When the law takes effect in 90 days, Massachusetts will have no legal mechanism to distinguish between a late-term abortion performed because a fetus cannot survive and one performed for any other reason a doctor is willing to approve.
Supporters call that trust in medicine. Critics call it the erasure of any legal recognition that a viable unborn child has interests worth protecting. Both sides should at least agree on what the law actually does, because Healey signed it, and there is no ambiguity left to hide behind.
