Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed a law earlier this month that fundamentally changes how the Commonwealth regulates abortions performed after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Supporters call it the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act. They say it protects the relationship between a woman and her physician and ensures that families facing devastating medical circumstances do not have to leave Massachusetts to receive care.
But the language of the law deserves a much closer look.
Before this legislation, Massachusetts permitted abortions after 24 weeks only under specifically defined circumstances: to preserve the life of the mother, protect her physical or mental health, or respond to a lethal or grave fetal diagnosis.
Those limitations have now been removed.
Under the new law, an abortion after 24 weeks may be performed simply “based upon the professional judgment of the physician.” It also provides that no medical-review process may override the judgment of the physician and the patient or the patient’s healthcare proxy.
In other words, Massachusetts no longer has an explicit gestational limit written into its abortion law.
That is not political exaggeration. It is what the legislation says.
Supporters understandably object when opponents describe this as allowing “abortion until birth.” They argue that abortions late in pregnancy are rare and generally involve heartbreaking medical complications. That may accurately describe most of these cases.
But legislation should not be judged solely by how its supporters say it will ordinarily be used. It must also be judged by what it legally permits.
If lawmakers intended this change to address unusual and medically complex pregnancies, they could have expanded the existing exceptions. They could have added language covering catastrophic fetal conditions that fall outside the previous definitions. They could have created a careful process that protected women facing tragic circumstances while still recognizing that a viable unborn child deserves some protection under the law.
They did not do that.
Instead, they removed the specific legal standards and replaced them with the professional judgment of the physician performing the abortion.
That raises an unavoidable question: Where is the line?
At 24 weeks, we are not discussing an abstract collection of cells or the earliest stages of pregnancy. We are talking about an unborn child who may be capable of surviving outside the womb with medical assistance. As medical science advances, that point of viability continues to move earlier.
Surely that reality deserves moral and legal consideration.
The Massachusetts House passed the bill by a vote of 121–35. The Senate approved it without a recorded roll-call vote. Governor Healey signed it on August 10.
Regardless of where someone stands on abortion, legislation this consequential should not move through government without a full and honest public discussion. Voters deserve to know precisely what was changed, why the existing medical exceptions were considered inadequate and why lawmakers chose to eliminate explicit limitations rather than carefully revise them.
This issue is often forced into two opposing political slogans: either you care about women or you care about unborn children. That is a dishonest and destructive choice.
We should be capable of showing profound compassion toward women and families confronting devastating pregnancies while also acknowledging the humanity of a viable unborn child. Those principles do not have to be enemies.
The most difficult circumstances demand thoughtful laws, careful safeguards and moral seriousness. They should not become the justification for removing every clearly defined boundary.
Massachusetts has now placed enormous authority in the hands of individual physicians while withdrawing the explicit protections that previously existed after 24 weeks.
Supporters call that trusting doctors.
Others will see it as the state abandoning its responsibility to protect viable unborn life.
But whichever description one chooses, the effect of the law is no longer in dispute: After 24 weeks, Massachusetts has erased the line.
And when government erases a line this consequential, every citizen has a right—and a responsibility—to ask what remains on the other side.
The Valley Viewpoint 