Massachusetts is on the way to giving doctors the final say on whether an abortion should be allowed late in pregnancy, a move expected to affect few cases but that supporters say is needed because hospitals are now turning away women they should be serving.
The state Senate adopted the measure Friday, sending it to Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, who has signed other laws strengthening abortion rights.
Under current Massachusetts law, abortion is legal for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. It is allowed after that only if a physician using best medical judgment says it is necessary to preserve the life, physical or mental health of the woman, because of a lethal fetal anomaly or diagnosis or because the fetus wouldn’t likely survive outside the uterus.
Under the new language, abortion would be legal at any point in pregnancy for any reason. It would leave it to health care providers whether or not to perform an abortion.
State Rep. Christine Barber said that under the current framework, hospitals turned away some women for abortions late in pregnancy, even in a case where a fetus had a stroke and was determined to be unlikely to survive.
Before the Senate vote Friday, Sen. Robyn Kennedy — a Democrat from Worcester — spoke in support of the bill.
“The reality is that medicine does not always fit into clearly defined legal categories,” she said. “Physicians need the ability to use their medical judgment and advise their patients when facing complex and rapidly changing medical circumstances.”
Getting rid of these restrictions, supporters say, would ensure that Massachusetts residents facing dire medical complications wouldn’t have to travel to Washington D.C. or as far as Colorado or New Mexico to get an abortion.
The change would make Massachusetts the 10th state, plus Washington D.C., to have no gestational limits on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute. But advocates say few clinics routinely offer this kind of care.
Kate Dineen has seen the consequences of Massachusetts’ limits personally. She became an outspoken advocate in Massachusetts for amending and eliminating gestational limits when the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Dineen was pregnant in 2021 when her fetus experienced a medical complication that she described as a catastrophic stroke. But she was in her third trimester, and her providers weren’t sure providing her with an abortion would neatly fall within the exceptions laid out in Massachusetts law. So she and her husband spent thousands of dollars traveling to a clinic in Maryland to get an abortion.
Her story pushed lawmakers to update the law in 2022 with broader exceptions. But still, advocates say, some people have to leave Massachusetts in order to get needed abortions. Speaking to GBH News last year, Dineen urged legislators to scrap the limits altogether.
“That ban has now more expansive exceptions — but it is still a ban with exceptions,” Dineen said. “And what we’ve learned, both here in Massachusetts and in other parts of the country, is that a ban with exceptions often just functions as a ban.”
Healey said on GBH’s Boston Public Radio that she supports the bill because of cases like Dineen’s.
“Obviously this is a situation that no one wants. Devastating, right? Devastating for parents,” the governor said Wednesday. “But if that happens, and when that happens, I want to make sure that women have access to the right health care, the health care that they need.”
Given how few providers offer this type of care, it could also make Massachusetts a destination for women in other states who are dealing with late-in-pregnancy complications.
Opponents say that it would allow abortion until birth — even on healthy fetuses — and that later abortions are more complex and risky for the women.
“While this legislation prioritizes access, it does not prioritize a woman’s safety,” Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said in a video encouraging supporters to tell lawmakers to reject the bill.
Massachusetts archbishops also took the rare step of issuing a statement against the bill this week, saying it would be “gravely immoral.”
Abortion law changes have slowed but not stopped
If Healey signs it, the law would be the latest change to a U.S. abortion landscape that received a shock four years ago after a Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans.
Some already had bans on the books as they waited for permission to enforce them, and others adopted bans or restrictions after the ruling. Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Another four bar it after about six weeks of pregnancy — which is often before women realize they are pregnant.
Several Democratic-controlled states have moved the other way, adding laws that seek to protect medical providers from prosecution for providing abortion to patients in other states. Massachusetts is among the states that has gone farthest, with a shield law that applies to those who prescribe abortion bills via telehealth to women in states where abortion is banned. Anti-abortion officials in Louisiana and Texas are testing those protections.
Most abortion-related state laws adopted this year have not made for major changes on when or how abortion is allowed.
For instance, a new Colorado law requires colleges that have student health centers to provide abortion pills for students starting in August 2027. Private schools that say it conflicts would their religious beliefs would be exempt.
A new Oklahoma law makes it a felony to buy or sell those pills for the purpose of an unlawful abortion for someone else.
