The Massachusetts legislature is following up last year’s NASTY Women Act (S.2260, which deleted old anti-abortion laws on the books) with this year’s ROE Act, or Act to Remove Obstacles and Expand Abortion Access (S.1209, H.3320). The bill would, among other things, allow third-trimester abortions “necessary to protect the patient’s life or physical or mental health, or in cases of lethal fetal anomalies, or where the fetus is incompatible with sustained life outside the uterus.” Massachusetts Forced-Birthers are reacting as badly as their counterparts in New York. (Gov. Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act into law in January, in spite of outrageous lies from the forced-birthers {Politifact, Factcheck.org}.)
An unholy alliance of MA state GOP and Catholic leaders are dialing it up to eleven to block ROE’s advance. The Republican Party Chair calls ROE a “radical infanticide bill,” saying it removes all limitations on “aborting unborn babies.” (That’s long-time forced-birther and ex-Andover Rep. Jim Lyon, who lost his House seat to Democrat Tram Nguyen last November.) The MA Republican Party is crying “infanticide” in Facebook ads:
bostonglobe/2019/04/01/mass-gop-accuses-abortion-rights-activists-supporting-infanticide
The party has launched Facebook ads accusing individual Democratic cosponsors of supporting “infanticide” through the bill that would permit abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases where the fetus has a fatal anomaly and is not expected to survive. Massachusetts law currently allows an abortion after 24 weeks only if necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
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“It’s outrageous,” said Representative Jay Livingstone, one of the lead sponsors, who was personally targeted on Facebook ads. He said Lyons “has always been antichoice, antiscience, similar to our president, who is doing whatever he can to end a woman’s ability to control her own body.”
“I’m disappointed that the governor, who’s the top elected official of that party, hasn’t condemned it,” Livingstone added. “It’s unfortunate that when there’s a discussion of medical procedures, that people will use misleading inflammatory rhetoric like that to try to get their way.”
Cardinal O’Mally uses Orwellian language to attack women’s right to the safest end to unviable pregnancies:
heraldnews/20190408/cardinal-omalley-roe-act-opposition-matter-of-human-rights
The head of the Catholic Church in Boston said this weekend that a bill that would expand abortion rights in Massachusetts would lead the state “in dangerous directions” and is “threatening to human life and dignity.”
The Catholic Church has long been opposed to abortion, but Cardinal Sean O’Malley said that he does not oppose the so-called ROE Act filed by Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad and Senate President Emerita Harriette Chandler “from a religious perspective but as an issue of human rights.”
[...]“The legislation is being advocated on the basis of complex and emotionally wrenching medical cases, but the implications of these laws without limits can lead far beyond the hard cases.”
Silly pro-choicers, getting emotionally wrenched by cases like the Massachusetts woman who needed to travel to Colorado when her pregnancy went horribly wrong, and wrote about it movingly last January:
therumpus.net/2018/01/rivers-of-babylon-the-story-of-a-third-trimester-abortion/
Three-quarters of MA voters support compassionate access to third-trimester abortion. In contrast to the Catholic Church hierarchy, Catholic voters in MA are solidly pro-choice:
massachusetts.prochoiceamericaaffiliates.org/…
76 percent [of MA voters] support an exception to the ban on abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy to protect a woman’s health or in cases of a grave fetal anomaly.
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Even among Catholic voters, 77 percent say Roe vs. Wade should stand. Another 78 percent of Catholics think abortion should be legal in almost all or most cases. Even in the case of a moral disagreement with abortion, 85 percent agree with the statement “I can hold my own moral views about abortion and still trust a woman and her family to make this decision for themselves”; 65 percent strongly agree with that statement.
92 co-sponsors in the House and 22 in the Senate support the legislation, but Governor Baker (the “reasonable”, “moderate” Republican) has signaled he will veto the bill:
wbur/2019/04/02/baker-later-term-abortion-bill
While the governor bemoaned the "inflated language" that gets used in the abortion debate — including by his own Republican party — Baker said he opposes "late-term abortion" and would defend the strength of the state's current laws.
House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad cuts through the lies and evasions:
"Late-term abortions are for very specific reasons that should be decided with a medical professional and the family involved," Haddad told the News Service. "We already have women who leave the state when there are cases of a fatal fetal anomaly. That's what we're talking about. We're talking a fetus that can't survive outside the womb. We're talking about a fetus that has no future."
The Massachusetts House has 160 seats (127 Dem), Senate 40 (34 D)—107/27 needed to override a veto. There are a lot of uncertainties about the bills’ future—House Speaker Robert DeLeo is not sounding enthusiastic:
wbur/2019/04/02/baker-later-term-abortion-bill
DeLeo said the Roe Act was "just another" one of many bills filed this session. "We'll see what happens as it goes through the process and we'll take it up from there," he told reporters.
Chandler's version of the bill has been referred to the Committee on Public Health, while Haddad's bill was sent to the Committee on the Judiciary, which means there could be two hearings before two different committees on the bills.
Anyone in MA should contact their legislators to let them know this is a priority. The ROE Act is more than just the third-trimester abortion expansion (notably, removing parental notification laws for minors); Planned Parenthood-MA has a good explainer. NARAL-MA is also supporting this effort; their bullet-point summary here:
prochoicemass.org/issue/expanding-abortion-access/
- Put the right to abortion in state law;
- Remove mandatory parental consent to abortion which disproportionately impacts low-income teens and teens of color;
- Allow for abortions after 24 weeks in cases of lethal fetal diagnoses, ensuring medical decisions remain between a patient and their doctor;
- Update inflammatory and medically inaccurate definitions of abortion and pregnancy in the law which currently define the “unborn child” as existing from the moment of implantation;
- Remove a mandatory 24-hour waiting period for abortion care. Though currently unenforced, dismantling Roe could easily bring this law back to life; and
- Establish safety net coverage for abortion care for people who don’t have health insurance.