Pro-abortion sneak attack

The Massachusetts House approved a measure in the state budget on Thursday that would codify abortion rights in state law and open the door to infanticide. The Roe Act died in committee earlier this year, but the lawmakers attached it as an amendment to the budget.

The amendment would remove protections for unborn babies after 24 weeks of gestation if they have a terminal condition or if a physician says an abortion would preserve the mother’s physical or mental health. “Virtually anything and everything can qualify for a legal post-24-week termination, including psychological, familial, and emotional factors,” Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism wrote in National Review.

Currently, girls under the age of 18 must have parental consent before getting an abortion in Massachusetts, but the amendment would lower that age to 16 and allow a judge to remove the parental consent requirement entirely for girls of any age in certain situations. It would also allow physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurse midwives to perform abortions.

Perhaps most troubling to pro-lifers, however, is the amendment’s removal of existing language that requires abortionists to “take all reasonable steps … to preserve the life and health of the aborted child” who is born alive.

“The new language states only that there must be ‘life-supporting equipment’ present, and eliminates the requirement for the abortionists to actually use it,” Massachusetts Citizens for Life explained on its website.

Citizens for Life does not expect the measure to become law, noting Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, previously said he intended to veto the ROE Act, as well as legislation that would make it legal for healthcare workers to deny care to abortion survivors or remove parental consent for teens to get abortions. Baker expressed other frustrations with the amendment. “Putting policy in the budget was something that both leaders in the House and Senate said they would not do,” he said. “This is definitely doing policy in the budget.”