In producing her first reelection commercial, Governor Maura Healey plugs in American Celtic punk fave “I'm Shipping up to Boston” as the soundtrack. While the Dropkick Murphys play, Healey’s voiceover drops these claims:
“We stand together on what matters most: making Massachusetts more affordable, defending healthcare and abortion rights, protecting our people and communities.”
Given the governor is underwater in current polls, her ad reflects a severe lack of awareness about what her constituents expect and what they’ve received during Healey’s first term.
According to University of New Hampshire poll results published this week, 45% of respondents disapprove of Healey’s job performance. Just 37% believe she deserves to be re-elected. The numbers aren't a splash but a trend, suggesting she’s treading water.
Reporting on polling data in May, the Boston Herald noted that Healey is “increasingly unpopular among voters that are younger, are male, or are registered as independents... It’s the third straight poll where Healey finished with a less than satisfactory approval among those polled, earning an overall net approval of -6 when subtracting the total percentage of those with an unfavorable view of her from the total percentage of those with a favorable view.”
Her ad offers no indication that she’s paying attention.
It first states “we stand together.” Yet, as they say, people vote with their feet. And Massachusetts residents have been doing a lot of walking away.
According to census data, up to 185,000 residents are leaving the Bay State each year. Healey apparently does not see the irony in choosing “I'm Shipping up to Boston;” far fewer people are shipping up here than to other states where affordability is real and government spending prioritizes the well being of U.S. citizens.
While the governor can legitimately claim that she has expanded “abortion rights,” her constituents do not share her zeal. As far as issues residents care about most, abortion doesn’t even make the list, as shown in May by MassINC Polling Group.
And judging by Democratic legislators recently shelving most of this session’s radical abortion bills, outlined below, even they can read tea leaves Healey chooses to ignore. She’s positioned abortion as a central tenet of her first term and seems unwilling to admit that it won’t be her winning strategy this time around.
After Dobbs overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, while campaigning for governor as the state’s attorney general, Healey published a consumer warning on the state's website. Its sole purpose was to stoke fear among the public about pregnancy resource centers (PRCs).
Despite multiple public records requests filed by Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which revealed no complaints of merit against our PRCs and thus no legitimate reason for the warning, the state site still features layers of this politicized rhetoric.
Additionally, thousands of petitions from Healey’s constituents statewide were delivered to her office by women helped at PRCs. The petitions simply asked that the governor cease her unjustified verbal attacks. To date, she has neither removed the web content nor acknowledged her constituents’ visit.
Healey’s list of pro-abortion policies since taking office in 2023 includes:
- On the second Dobbs anniversary, she signed an executive order directing Massachusetts agencies to protect access to “emergency abortion care” if federal pro-life protections were instituted. The order instructed state agencies to ensure hospitals complied with emergency treatment obligations, including “medically necessary” abortions.
- That same month, she launched a taxpayer-funded smear campaign against our PRCs, allocating up to $8 million for the statewide effort.
- Her administration has continued implementing Massachusetts' shield laws, designed to protect abortionists and those who provide telehealth abortions to patients from states where pro-life protections are in place. In 2024, this resulted in the deaths of 49,450 unborn children across the country, most who died due to abortion pills marketed by and shipped from Massachusetts.
- She directed the University of Massachusetts to order a multi-year supply of mifepristone and stockpiled it at UMass Amherst, in case the federal government prohibited sales of the abortion pill.
The final claim in Healey’s ad relates to “protecting our people.” Acknowledging her disregard for the unborn, and Massachusetts Citizens for Life’s mission to defend their right to life, it’s worth taking a look at Department of Public Health abortion numbers from Healey’s first two years in office (years for which abortion data is available).
Within those two years alone, Maura Healey's administration failed to protect 39,343 unborn Massachusetts citizens and an additional 34,255 out-of-state children. Since she's not assuring viewers that she stood together with women, we're left to wonder if 73,598 of them were subsequently overlooked and unsupported during perhaps the most challenging experience they will ever face.
In spite of Healey’s wish to elevate abortion rights during her campaign, state legislators know, as they head into their own reelection bids this fall, that Massachusetts voters won’t support radical laws that lack common sense. So our lawmakers recently tossed out several anti-life bills.
These are BIG wins for our most vulnerable as the legislative session wraps up on July 31. Because of Massachusetts Citizens for Life partners, who sent thousands of opposition testimonies via our Legislative Action Center and testified in person, these are the results:
- Our pregnancy resource centers won! The Department of Public Health will not roll out another smear campaign against them.
- Parental consent remains! Girls younger than 16 are protected, because they still need parental consent before having an abortion.
- Abortion pill reversal is safe! If a woman changes her mind after taking the abortion pill, doctors can still prescribe abortion pill reversal – without the state threatening to revoke their license.
- Men and women in the military will not be targeted by the abortion industry. The Department of Veterans Services will not be required to promote abortion or abortion funding to our servicemembers.
MCFL and our supporters have fought hard this past session to realize these wins. Though the governor might think her constituents “stand together” with her where her abortion policy is concerned, she should think again.
Relying on abortion to fill her electoral sails will result in nothing other than a sinking ship.
This story was originally published In NRL News Today on July 9, 2026.