I, like the vast majority of Massachusetts voters, support access to abortion health care and want to make sure that everyone in the commonwealth can access this essential care when they need it. Current Massachusetts laws uphold unjust and medically unnecessary barriers to abortion health care. These barriers do nothing to protect patients or improve people’s lives; instead, they unnecessarily delay and deny care. These barriers are even forcing pregnant people to travel out of state for their care during this worsening pandemic.
Equitable access to abortion is essential to women’s full participation in economic and community life and to the stability and well-being of the commonwealth’s children and families. “The Turnaway Study” of the impact of abortion care barriers found that women who could not access an abortion they sought had worse outcomes by every measure — financial, physical, professional, personal, emotional and psychological — than those who were able to access abortion care. This rigorous, longitudinal study found that denying women abortion “creates economic hardship and insecurity which lasts for years” and negatively impacts their children’s development and financial well-being.
The Massachusetts House and Senate have overwhelmingly approved provisions to the state budget that will improve access to safe and timely abortion care in our state. (Thank you to my representatives, Sen. Jo Comerford and Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, for your two years of work and leadership to make this happen.) I urge Gov. Charlie Baker to secure these carefully considered provisions with his own signature. The budget amendment to strengthen access to abortion health care under our state law is long overdue and more crucial than ever. The threat that the federal right will be overturned is real and imminent. State action to secure this fundamental health and human right is paramount.
I urge the governor to stand with the 80% of Massachusetts voters, including Catholics, who support everyone’s access to respectful, quality and affordable abortion care by signing the budget amendment on his desk that will improve access to abortion health care, without political interference, in the commonwealth.
Jenifer McKenna lives in Leeds.