Governor Healey has a chance to revise this bill and include common sense provisions that her colleagues in the legislature disregarded.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Saturday, August 1st, 2026.
Contact: Myrna Maloney Flynn, [email protected]
Governor Healey Must Veto Massachusetts' Abortion-Until-Birth Bill
WALPOLE, Massachusetts.— Yesterday, after lawmakers suspended the chamber's rules to expedite its passage on the final day of formal legislative sessions, the Massachusetts Senate approved legislation that would remove the state's current 24-week abortion limit and allow abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy, including on viable unborn children. The bill, ‘An Act Prioritizing Patient Access to Care’, had passed the House largely along party lines just one week earlier and now heads to Governor Maura Healey, who has the authority to sign it, veto it, or return it with amendments.
The expedited vote comes as the Massachusetts Legislature continues to face criticism over transparency. In 2024, nearly 72% of Massachusetts voters approved Ballot Question 1, authorizing the State Auditor to audit the Legislature, yet legislative leaders have continued to resist that effort. While nearly 2,000 bills remained pending before lawmakers at the close of formal sessions, legislative leadership prioritized advancing this abortion expansion bill.
“‘An Act Prioritizing Patient Access to Care’ endangers one patient and completely overlooks another in a gruesome and violent assault on human rights,” said Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life.
The legislation removes Massachusetts’ current 24-week limit on abortion and allows elective abortions up to birth based solely on a physician’s “professional judgment.” It eliminates the current requirement that complex late-term abortions be performed in a hospital setting, allowing abortions on healthy mothers and healthy infants at a stage when unborn children can feel pain and may be able to survive outside the womb.
“Late-term abortions present a number of significant risks to women, which is why the procedures have long been performed in hospitals. There is one reason why pro-abortion activists want to remove hospitals from abortion policy, and it has nothing to do with women’s care or safety,” Flynn said.
“Not one legislator who voted for this has been brave enough to acknowledge the truth, the inconvenient fact that this bill allows heinous dismemberment abortions on perfectly healthy and viable babies. It is accepted science that an unborn baby’s nervous system is developed enough at 24 weeks of pregnancy so that the baby can feel pain. By passing this bill, Massachusetts lawmakers have decided that an abortionist can crush the skull of any infant then tear that baby apart, limb by limb.” Flynn stated.
Governor Healey has a chance to revise this bill and include common sense provisions that her colleagues in the legislature disregarded. Massachusetts Citizens for Life respectfully implores her to do the right thing and position women’s safety and unborn human rights over politicized and euphemistic ‘access.’
About Massachusetts Citizens for Life
Massachusetts Citizens for Life is the largest and longest-serving right-to-life organization in New England. From before the crushing Supreme Court decision, Roe V. Wade, we’ve been involved in the critical quest to restore respect for every human life from conception until natural death. We will continue to seek justice for the vulnerable, to defend our fellow human beings rights to life and safety until and after abortion is a matter of history. Just as Dred Scott, the Court decision that declared slaves only partially human under the law, is now viewed with disgust, so will Roe be. That shift will come about because of our perseverance and your participation in this, the human rights battle of our era. Join us.