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Gov. Maura Healey enacted an emergency preamble amid a signature campaign threatening to suspend the new law.
Gov. Maura Healey used her executive powers last week to immediately place the state’s new abortion law into effect as anti-abortion advocacy groups threatened to block the expanded rights.
The law removed the limits on abortions at or after 24 weeks of pregnancy, replacing a narrow set of restrictions on abortions later in a pregnancy with the “professional judgment of the physician.” Healey signed the law on Aug. 10, and with the standard 90-day interim period, it would have gone into effect on Nov. 8.
In the meantime, anti-abortion advocates collected more than 113,000 signatures — enough to place a referendum on the 2028 ballot and nearly double the amount needed to block the law’s implementation until then.
But before the Secretary of the Commonwealth could verify the signatures, on Nov. 6, Healey filed an emergency preamble to put the law into effect two days early. At least nine patients have been denied care since Healey signed the law, the governor said in a post on her Substack.
“If certified, that effort would suspend the law until voters decide its future. That could mean two more years of women being denied care,” Healey wrote in a statement. “That’s not a reality I can accept here in Massachusetts.”
The ballot question process will still go on, and Healey, who won reelection in a landslide earlier this month, said she would respect Massachusetts voters if they repealed the law in 2028.
“But families should not have to go without the care they need while that process plays out,” she wrote.
Anti-abortion advocates, however, found the preamble “disgraceful” and asked Healey to explain the circumstances of the emergency. Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, one of those anti-abortion advocacy groups, said the preamble showed an “utter disregard” for the will of her constituents.
“She has not sufficiently explained the ’emergency’ that warrants her undemocratic rejection of the people’s will, because such an emergency does not exist, only weakness on her part,” Flynn said in a statement posted to social media.
Healey enacted a similar emergency preamble two years ago when a petition drive threatened to block a sweeping gun-reform law — a law more than 67 percent of the electorate voted to uphold last week.
The abortion law adds Massachusetts to a list of 10 states with similar protections on late-term abortions, alongside the likes of Maine, Vermont, Maryland, Oregon, and Michigan.
Previously, the commonwealth allowed these late-term abortions only under a narrow set of circumstances, such as a threat to the life of the patient or cases of a severe fetal diagnosis. Healey wrote that there were also differing interpretations of the previous version of the law.
Massachusetts recorded 99 abortions at 24 weeks or later in 2024, compared to 84 in 2023, data from the Department of Public Health shows. That represents 0.34 percent of 24355 abortions received in the state in 2023 and 0.2 percent of the 49450 abortions in Massachusetts in 2024.
The Catholic Church is a staunch opponent of the new abortion law. Catholic leadership across the commonwealth — Archbishop Richard Henning of Boston and bishops Robert McManus of Worcester, Edgar da Cunha of Fall River, and William Byrne of Springfield — penned a message calling the law “radically permissive” and questioning the emergency preamble.
“Our work continues as we heed the call of the Gospel to defend life at all stages,” the bishops wrote. “We pray for our Governor and legislators that the Lord may inspire wise and compassionate leadership.”
In Healey’s statement, she acknowledged her Catholic faith, but described herself a leader for all faiths and beliefs. She added the situations requiring late-term abortions typically involve “devastating diagnoses,” citing stories of parents who had to drive down the coast to Maryland and Washington D.C. for care.
“It is heartbreaking for any parent to make that decision,” Healey said. “But when they do, they deserve compassionate, medically appropriate care close to home, from doctors they trust.”
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