A bill that would loosen restrictions on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy is gaining momentum on Beacon Hill, with supporters saying it would help many mothers with serious complications access the care they need without having to travel great distances outside of Massachusetts.
“This bill has been part of a longer trajectory in ensuring that people are able to get the reproductive care that they need in Massachusetts,” said Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, who filed House Bill 5595, an act prioritizing patient access to care.
The legislation Sabadosa championed alongside Rep. Christine Barber, D-Somerville, passed in the House of Representatives on a 119-33 vote last Wednesday, and it will head to the Senate. All Republicans who voted did so opposing the bill, along with a handful of Democrats.
If passed, the bill would erase language from state law that currently allows for abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if it is necessary to preserve the physical and mental health of the mother or the life of the fetus.
Physicians would instead be given more power to make a decision that’s best for the mother, without having to worry about abiding by “arbitrary legal lines,” Sabadosa said. No third-party medical review would be able to override the determination of the physician.
“It [would be] 100% the physician and their patients [making a decision],” she said.
The bill has its opposition, including anti-abortion groups, who argue that limited restrictions will give too much control to physicians.
“The good intentions of this bill’s sponsors are gravely misplaced,” wrote Massachusetts Citizens for Life in a statement opposing the bill. “As written, their abortion-up-to-birth bill permits one physician to subjectively decide that any unborn infant can be killed in or outside of a hospital, even babies capable of surviving outside the womb and feeling pain within it.”
The group said that women experiencing “unimaginable, heart-wrenching pregnancy complications” deserve all the support they need, but the bill would not provide that. Instead, it would increase abortion industry profits and taxpayer-funded late-term procedures, the group claims.
Legal restrictions have hurt many mothers in Massachusetts, Sabadosa said, including Boston resident Kate Dineen, whose son suffered a catastrophic stroke 33 weeks into a “deeply wanted” pregnancy in 2021. Dineen said she and her husband made the “difficult and compassionate” decision to terminate the pregnancy, hearing that their son would likely not live after birth.
“The whole experience was really devastating and scary, and I was so confused at the time about why I couldn’t access this medical care in Massachusetts,” Dineen said. “I never thought I would ever need to seek abortion care later in pregnancy.”
At the time, however, state law restricted the diagnosis of “lethal fetal anomaly” from qualifying for an abortion, Dineen said, forcing her and her husband to drive 500 miles to Maryland for care. Dozens of patients annually travel out of state to obtain abortion care later in pregnancy because of existing legal restrictions, according to the organization Reproductive Equity Now, on whose board Dineen sits.
“(We need to) move away from that ‘ban with exceptions framework’ and allow patients and providers to make decisions about abortion without government interference,” Dineen said.
Massachusetts took steps to expand abortion access in 2020 with the ROE Act, which was bolstered in 2022 with an act expanding protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care. However, Sabadosa said there are still mothers traveling out of state to access care, often incurring large expenses to do so.
“It (the proposed bill) puts us in line with very few other states right now and it’s just so important at a time when we’re seeing reproductive rights get rolled back across the country, that Massachusetts is one of the leading states in reproductive rights,” Sabadosa said.
Cory Ellen Gatrall, a board member of the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, said that the fund pledged almost $40,000 for 22 clients to travel out of state to receive care after 24 weeks, and in the first six months of 2025, it had spent more than $17,000 for 16 clients.
While the fund serves patients across the state, Gatrall said those numbers do not include other organizations. Based on research in 2022, she added that operations after 24 weeks can range from a couple thousand dollars to more than $25,000.
“When you impose arbitrary gestational limits, what that means is folks need to travel away from their communities, away from their trusted healthcare providers, away from their families to receive necessary care,” Gatrall said.
Among House Democrats who supported the bill was Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, D-Quincy, who said in a statement, “This legislation is about ensuring that in Massachusetts, reproductive health care decisions are made exclusively by the patient and her doctor — unencumbered by a legal framework that, in practice, isn’t always capable of accounting for the complexity and uncertainty inherent to pregnancy-related health care.”
Mariano was sent a letter of support for the bill from several Bay State medical institutions including the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, UMass Memorial Health, Mass General Brigham, Tufts Medicine and Beth Israel Lahey Health, whose authors said they don’t believe the current framework meets the need of patients based on current clinicians’ experience.
“Patients continue to encounter circumstances in which clinically appropriate care cannot be lawfully provided at Massachusetts hospitals because their diagnosis does not clearly fit within the law’s existing exceptions framework,” the letter states.
Rep. Kelly Pease, a Republican from Westfield who also represents Southampton, opposes the bill, which he said blindsided him. Similarly, the Massachusetts Family Institute wrote that the bill was “railroaded through the House for a vote with virtually no warning,” giving anti-abortion groups little time to react.
“I think most of our caucus was. It’s like, where did this come from?” Pease told State House News Service. “I don’t see how I’m going to be in favor of a bill that allows babies over six months to be terminated when they’re probably viable outside the womb, unless there’s extenuating circumstances, and this kind of just takes away some of the safeguards that were in place before.”
Sabadosa said abortion cases are not “black and white.” When someone has been denied care and put in an “incredibly difficult situation,” such as Dineen, Sabadosa said “compassion kicks in.”
“At the end of the day, our goal is make sure that on an individual basis, people will be alright and this bill really protects that,” she said.
Sabadosa said she is “eternally optimistic” that the Senate will pass the bill, which needs to be done by the end of the current legislative session at the end of July.
Material from State House News Service was used in this article.
