Massachusetts’ approval of Bill H.5595 expands abortion access through all stages of pregnancy, marking a grave moral failure and underscoring the urgent need for national protections for unborn children.
Lawmakers in Boston have quietly advanced a radical abortion agenda, making Massachusetts one of the nation’s most permissive states for abortion.
In late July, the Massachusetts House and Senate officially passed Bill H.5595, deceptively titled the “Prioritizing Patients’ Access to Care Act,” and sent it on to Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, who signed it on August 10.
The new law will remove nearly every remaining restriction on abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
By characterizing such a measure as “expanding healthcare access,” Massachusetts exposes the tragic consequences of a culture that devalues life. Once in effect, H.5595 will allow abortion until birth based solely on the “professional judgment” of a single physician. Taxpayer funds will pay for these abortions and longstanding protections for infants will be eliminated.
When a state legalizes abortion up to the moment of birth, it stands in direct defiance of God’s truth and the belief that every human life is sacred from conception.
Such laws send a frightening message that a person’s worth depends on whether they are wanted or considered convenient. When our nation allows the most defenseless among us to be discarded, it also erodes the American principle that all are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
And the damage doesn’t stop with the preborn. A society that judges human value by circumstance instead of by the creation by God risks losing compassion for the weak, disabled, elderly, and anyone who cannot speak for themselves.
Just ask Canada, which has long had one of the world’s most permissive abortion laws, allowing abortion to be performed throughout all nine months of pregnancy.
In 2016, the country legalized euthanasia for the terminally ill, but it quickly expanded the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program to also cover those with “serious or incurable illness, disease or disability” or those in “an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability.” As a result, our “nice” neighbor to the north has now actively killed nearly 100,000 of its own citizens in just 10 years.
Exploitation Over Debate
To grasp the full weight of this tragedy, one must understand that Massachusetts already had some of most permissive abortion laws in America, permitting abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy for any reason.
That’s the stage at which preborn children possess fully formed organs, respond to external stimuli, and can survive outside the womb with modern neonatal care.
Yet for abortion advocates in Massachusetts, it wasn’t enough. They pressed for total, unrestricted abortion-on-demand throughout all three trimesters.
The tactic used by state leaders to enact this law reveals a calculated political strategy. Across the country, pro-abortion strategists have frequently pursued ballot measures to enshrine a “constitutional right to reproductive care” into state constitutions, attempting to engineer a public mandate.
But in the Bay State, the political establishment deliberately bypassed the constitutional amendment process. Lawmakers understood that a public debate over changing the law to allow a single doctor to greenlight a third-trimester abortion could stir the moral conscience of citizens.
To avoid public scrutiny, the legislature used its statutory authority to quickly ram H.5595 through both chambers at the end of July. By choosing legislation over a constitutional amendment in the middle of summer while most people were focused on vacation and back to school efforts, lawmakers avoided a public debate and handed the abortion industry its goal of complete deregulation.
The Mechanics of Barbarism: Cruelty, Profits, and Deception
The details of Bill H.5595 reveal a troubling surrender of human rights to abortion ideology. Previously, late-term abortions were limited by law to specific exceptions. H.5595 removes those limits, replacing them with a broad standard that allows abortion through all nine months based only on the go-ahead of a single physician.
As Kelsey Pritchard, communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, observed, this standard creates a glaring conflict of interest: “Under this law the abortionist, who profits financially from performing the abortion, is the sole approver.”
We must speak clearly about what late-trimester abortions involve. These are not mere medical procedures. They are acts of violence against a fully developed child. Depending on the stage of pregnancy, the preborn child may be dismembered through a surgical abortion or delivered after a lethal injection is administered to stop the baby’s heart.
As medical forensic experts note, when labor is induced without a lethal injection, infants are sometimes born alive; absent strict legal protections and transparency, these babies may be s lifesaving medical care.
Supporters of H.5595, including its sponsor State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D, claim that medical decisions should be left to patients and doctors, not lawmakers, and present the bill as a victory for women seeking late-term procedures. This argument ignores the central issue: Abortion involves an innocent preborn child whose God-given right to life is denied.
A Call to National Action
Gov. Healey’s signing of H.5595 adds Massachusetts to a small but growing group of states (along with Washington, D.C.) that allow abortion throughout all nine months.
Around the world, the United States is one of only eight countries, including China and North Korea, that permit abortion after 20 weeks. In contrast, nearly all European nations restrict abortion after 15 weeks.
So Massachusetts is not advancing human rights. It is embracing abortion policies that are more permissive than those of nearly every European nation and mirror the practices of many countries the United States regularly criticizes for human-rights abuses.
Polls are often used to normalize these extreme measures, but late-term abortion laws have the support of only a small percentage of Americans.
Why do such laws continue to move forward? For one, the pro-abortion movement is quite successful at obfuscating and confusing the issue. Extreme abortion laws are framed as necessary to save the life of the mother, when, in fact, every state — even those with the most stringent pro-life laws — already allow for this possibility. More often, pro-abortion advocates push them to remove safeguards, such requiring more than two or three physicians to agree that the procedure is absolutely necessary.
The second reason that these extreme laws are taking hold is because, as Pritchard rightly noted, too many have accepted a “states-only” philosophy on abortion that treats the value of human life as a matter of geography.
It is a serious theological mistake to suggest that a child’s right to life depends on the state where he or she is conceived. God’s moral law does not stop at state lines. A baby in Boston is just as fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God as a baby in Dallas or Little Rock.
“The GOP must abandon the failed ‘leave it to the states’ position and move the country toward a national protection for unborn children across this nation,” Pritchard stated.
For the Church, this is a time that calls for bold moral clarity and action. Scripture instructs us in Proverbs 31:8-9 to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. No one is more voiceless or vulnerable today than a preborn child threatened by all-trimester abortion.
We must not remain silent while bills like H.5595 pass and are signed without protest. We must hold our elected officials accountable when they put political interests above the sanctity of life. Above all, we must pray for our nation, asking God to awaken the conscience of our leaders and give His Church the courage to stand for the Gospel of Life.
As H.5595 and similarly extreme laws take effect, the Church is called to stand as a light in the darkness. We must step up efforts to educate people on the barbaric reality of abortion, serve mothers in need, support crisis pregnancy centers, offer compassion to those hurting from past abortions, pray fervently for repentance and revival, and boldly demand equal legal protection for every preborn child — no matter where they are conceived.
Every life carries a story worth protecting before its first page is ever written. If this article strengthened your resolve to defend the unborn, help us keep shining a light on the laws and ideas shaping America’s culture of life. Your gift equips the Standing for Freedom Center to speak with biblical clarity, serve the vulnerable, and call the Church to courageous action. Consider making a gift here.
