My son turned 1 year old last month, but I still have his ultrasound pictures up on the fridge.They were the first time I got to see his little hands, his feet, and even his eyes open wide and looking, somehow, right at me.
He was 20 weeks along in that picture.Already kicking.
Already reaching.Already becoming the boy who now pulls himself up on that same refrigerator door.I thought of him — of those pictures curling on my fridge — as I watched Massachusetts Democrat Gov.
Maura Healey sign a law this week that strips protections from every baby at the same stage of pregnancy against late-term abortion.The state’s new law, the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, guts existing legislation that restricted abortions at 24 weeks and later to cases involving the mother’s life, physical or mental health, or severe fetal diagnoses, and replaces those specific statutory conditions with a sweeping new standard stating that "an abortion may be performed by a physician based upon the professional judgment of the physician." No gestational limit.No requirement that any particular maternal or fetal condition be present.DEM GOV MAURA HEALEY SIGNS SWEEPING MASSACHUSETTS BILL ALLOWING ABORTIONS UP TO BIRTHSurrounded by cheering supporters at the signing, Healey insisted the new law is meant to protect women.
Protect them from what, exactly? Massachusetts women facing the truly horrific scenarios — pregnancies that turned fatal for mother or child — already had access to abortion under the state’s prior law.This bill doesn’t hand them a single protection they didn’t already have.What it does do is remove the specific guardrails that governed abortions at such a late stage — namely, the requirement that a physician determine that the abortion was necessary to protect the mother’s life, physical or mental health, or was warranted because of a lethal or extraordinarily grave fetal diagnosis.Under the new law, none of those circumstances have to be establ...