Massachusetts joined nine other states and Washington, D.C., on Monday by removing all gestational age limits for abortion.
Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) on Monday signed a bill passed by the state legislature at the end of July that allows for elective abortion through all weeks of pregnancy based upon the professional judgment of a medical doctor performing the abortion.
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“We believe that healthcare decisions should be made between women and families and their doctors, not politicians,” Healy said at the bill-signing ceremony. “Abortion will remain safe, it will remain legal, and it will remain accessible here in Massachusetts.”
The law, passed by the Democratic-majority legislature before the summer recess period, repeals a prior law that restricted abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy except in life-threatening circumstances for the mother or child.
Healy said during the signing ceremony that there have been many stories “filled with a lot of pain and anguish and heartache and a lot of trauma” from couples who have been told that their child has a life-threatening or life-limiting condition after the prior 24-week cutoff period.
Massachusetts joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., in eliminating gestational age limits for abortion.
The majority of the 1.1 million abortions in the United States are in the first trimester of pregnancy, and most involve the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol.
Nearly 8 in 10 abortions occur before 10 weeks of pregnancy, and more than 9 in 10 occur during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the pro-abortion think tank the Guttmacher Institute.
Roughly 8% of abortions in the U.S., or 88,000 each year, happen in the second trimester or later in pregnancy.
Most abortions performed during the second and third trimesters are done by dilation and evacuation, commonly referred to as a D&E. This involves the woman’s cervix being dilated and the fetus and placenta being removed by suction and cutting instruments.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that it should “shock the conscience that tens of thousands of unborn Americans are barbarically dismembered limb by limb and torn apart every single year.”
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Dannenfelser said the new state law demonstrates the failure of the state-by-state approach to abortion regulation that some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have advocated since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“Without a minimum national standard, the United States remains 1 of only 8 countries worldwide that allows abortion at any point in pregnancy,” Dannenfelser said. “We must do all we can to turn the page on America’s ugly chapter of late-term abortion.”
