The "R.O.E." Act, or S.1209/H.3320, having stalled in the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, has been re-packaged by Representative Claire Cronin as Amendment 759 to the Annual Massachusetts Budget; and as Amendment 180 in the Senate.

It has since been reconciled by committee as section 40 in the proposed annual budget bill, and forwarded to Governor Charlie Baker to approve or veto. Baker (as reported here) line-vetoed much of the abortion-promoting provisions, including a veto of the removal of parental consent for children under 18 seeking abortions. 

The ROE Act as Amendments 180/ 759: Just the facts

compiled by a legal team of pro-life attorneys and lobbyists

• Amendment #789 to H5150 would eliminate current laws requiring that physicians “take all reasonable steps to preserve the life and health of the aborted child” — The following language in the current law is clear in its requirement to preserve the life of the child:

Section 12P. If an abortion is performed pursuant to section twelve M, the physician performing the abortion shall take all reasonable steps, both during and subsequent to the abortion, in keeping with good medical practice, consistent with the procedure being used, to preserve the life and health of the aborted child.

The new language states only that there must be “life-supporting equipment” present, and eliminates the requirement for the abortionist to actually USE it.

• This amendment would allow for abortions after a 24-week period, citing that it only be deemed “necessary, in the best medical judgment of the physician, to preserve the patient’s physical or mental health”
• Children born after the 24-week mark, ​according to the New England Journal of Medicine,​ if provided with medical treatment, have a survival rate of more than 50 percent — a number that jumps up to 72 percent at 25 weeks.
• The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, named after former Planned Parenthood president and eugenics supporter Dr. Allan Frank Guttmacher, has acknowledged​ “that most women seeking later terminations are ​not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
• This amendment repeals parental consent requirements for minors between the ages of 16 and 17, and allows doctors to waive the requirement for parental consent for girls of ANY age who believe they may be pregnant.
• This amendment expands who can perform an abortion to now include a physician assistant, nurse practitioner, or nurse midwife.