Why the veil of secrecy surrounding abortions in the third trimester, which begins at week 28? Because even pro-abortion Americans know that aborting a child who is capable of surviving outside the womb is grotesque. If we don’t know the number, we don’t have to think about it.

But Democrats in Massachusetts did think about it and decided they needed more late-term abortions. Talking to a radio station about the bill, Healey gave the example of a baby at 33 weeks’ gestation who suffered a stroke and whose mother then had to travel to Maryland to abort her child. (It’s hard to talk about a 33-week abortion in Maryland without thinking about Jennifer Morbelli, who died, along with her unborn daughter, following an abortion at 33 weeks at the hands of the late LeRoy Carhart in Germantown, Maryland.)

Healey’s rationale, that dire circumstances forced the abortion, fed right into another fallacy about late abortion: that it is only performed because of worst-case scenarios. But as Guttmacher’s own research points out, women who choose abortion beyond 20 weeks fall into five broad categories: (1) Women raising children alone; (2) women dealing with depression or substance use; (3) women experiencing conflict with a partner; (4) women who had difficulty deciding and subsequently encountered access problems; and (5) younger women without children.

Massachusetts law previously permitted abortions after 24 weeks only when necessary to preserve the life or physical or mental health of the mother, or for a “life-limiting” diagnosis for the baby. The new law deviates from the old one in that previously, exceptions to the 24-week limit required a doctor’s “medical judgment.” Now, just his or her “professional judgment” is enough to sign a death warrant for a healthy baby of a healthy mother.

A third-trimester abortion can cost up to $25,000. Abortionists are not the cream of the medical crop, so forgive me for thinking there are not too many instances when they would turn away such a payday.

Later abortions have already been on the rise in Massachusetts. Forty-one procedures took place at or beyond 24 weeks in 2022, and that jumped to 81 in 2023, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade the previous year and states began enforcing laws protecting the unborn.

If these abortions took place beyond 24 weeks, they needed to meet the criteria in place before Healey signed the no limits bill this week. The numbers for 2024 and 2025 have not yet been released, but it will be interesting to see — if the information ever actually becomes available — if the numbers continued to climb. Cynical minds might see that a thriving market in late-term abortion would only increase its sales once all restrictions on abortion were removed.

The women who surrounded Healey as she signed this terrible bill smiled and laughed and applauded, celebrating the fact that no baby in the womb is assured of a birthday in Massachusetts.

ABORTION PILLS DON’T EMPOWER WOMEN. THEY EMPOWER ABUSIVE MEN

Whatever one’s broader position on abortion, the question of what protections society owes a child at 28, 30, or 33 weeks deserves honest scrutiny rather than euphemisms or silence. If the public is going to make informed decisions about abortion policy, it needs transparent data about how often these procedures occur, why they are sought, and under what circumstances they are performed.

The debate should not be settled by slogans or partisan applause, but by confronting the moral and human realities of late abortion — and by asking whether a society committed to protecting vulnerable human beings can really regard birth as the dividing line between a life worthy of protection and one that is not.

Janet Morana is the executive director of Priests for Life and the co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign.