Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act into law Sunday, eliminating the state's 24-week gestational limit on abortion and giving physicians unlimited discretion to perform the procedure at any point in pregnancy — making Massachusetts the tenth state in the country to remove all gestational age limits on abortion.
Healey signed the bill surrounded by applause at a ceremony in Boston, pledging that abortion will remain "safe, legal and accessible" in Massachusetts for as long as she is governor. Under the previous law, abortions after 24 weeks required approval from a physician and were permitted only under specific medical circumstances. The new law replaces that framework with a standard that allows healthcare providers to determine on their own whether to perform a late-term abortion, with no mandatory review process and no gestational cutoff. It takes effect in 90 days. Massachusetts joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia in eliminating gestational limits entirely.
"We believe that health care decisions should be made between women and families and their doctors, not politicians. Abortion will remain safe. It will remain legal, and it will remain accessible here in Massachusetts." — Gov. Maura Healey
Healey framed the legislation as both a shield against federal restrictions and a statement of Massachusetts values, arguing that families facing difficult late-pregnancy situations — including fatal fetal diagnoses and maternal health complications — should be able to access care in-state rather than traveling elsewhere. What she did not address is the far broader reality of what the law permits: elective late-term abortions on healthy pregnancies, with no requirement for any clinical justification beyond a provider's individual discretion. There is no trimester. There is no threshold. There is no exception framework, because there are no limits to except from. A baby at 38 weeks of gestation can now be legally aborted in Massachusetts, and no one is required to explain why.
Pro-life advocates and medical ethicists responded with sharp criticism. Massachusetts Citizens for Life called the signing "the most extreme abortion legislation in the commonwealth's history" and noted that the law places Massachusetts in alignment with a small minority of countries globally that permit abortion through all nine months of pregnancy with no restrictions. Republican state legislators who opposed the bill argued it goes dramatically beyond what most Massachusetts residents support, and called for the legislature to at minimum require some form of oversight for third-trimester procedures.
Late-term abortions — generally defined as those performed after 21 weeks — account for approximately 1% of all abortions in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, in raw numbers that 1% represents roughly 10,000 procedures annually. Medical organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have argued that late-term abortions are almost always performed in cases of severe fetal anomaly or serious maternal health risk, though no comprehensive federal data exists to verify this claim because states are not required to report abortion reasons.
Maura Healey told supporters Monday that she stands with women and her opponents do not. That is a convenient framing for a law that removes every protection for unborn children at every stage of development, with no exceptions, no oversight, and no accountability. There is a meaningful difference between protecting access to abortion in difficult circumstances and legislating that a viable, healthy baby can be aborted for any reason or no reason, right up to birth. Massachusetts has now chosen the latter — and no amount of applause at a bill signing changes what that means.