CatholicVote demands Massachusetts bishops excommunicate Gov. Healey over abortion-until-birth law

A leading Catholic advocacy group is pressing the bishops of Massachusetts to excommunicate Gov. Maura Healey after she signed legislation eliminating the state's gestational limits on abortion, a move the group calls a public act of grave sin.

CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt sent a letter to the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts requesting they formally excommunicate Healey, a Democrat who identifies as Catholic, following her August 10 signing of H.5595, titled the "Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act." The law strips away Massachusetts' previous 24-week abortion limit and replaces it with a standard based solely on a physician's professional judgment, opening the door to abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

Reinhardt's letter, first reported by Breitbart News, cited church canon holding that anyone who procures a completed abortion, or serves as an accomplice, faces automatic excommunication. The CatholicVote chief argued Healey meets the definition of an "essential accomplice" because the legislation could not have taken legal effect without her signature.

Reinhardt calls Healey 'the necessary final act' in legalizing abortion until birth

The letter does not hold back about where CatholicVote believes the governor stands under Catholic teaching. Reinhardt wrote directly to the bishops:

"A governor who signs legislation into law is not a bystander: she is the necessary final act of a legislative process that cannot take legal effect without her. Without her signature the abortions that H. 5595 enables would not occur. She is not merely complicit in a general cultural sense, but in the precise canonical meaning of the term."

Reinhardt acknowledged the question of excommunication belongs to the bishops, not to her organization. But she framed the request as a matter of doctrinal urgency, not political posturing.

"The question before you is whether Governor Healey qualifies as an essential accomplice under this canon. We believe the answer is yes, but most importantly, we believe that such a conclusion can only be asserted beyond doubt by your authority."

The letter also took aim at the August 10 signing ceremony itself, where Healey was surrounded by supporters who applauded as she put pen to paper. Reinhardt described the scene as a public scandal that demands a public response from the Church.

"What was communicated to Catholics in Massachusetts and to all of us watching across the country by that ceremony? That a Catholic in good standing can sign legislation permitting abortion until birth and be celebrated for it."

That framing, a Catholic governor celebrating a law that the Church considers gravely sinful, sits at the center of Reinhardt's argument. She pressed the bishops to act not as a punishment but as what the Church calls a "medicinal penalty," aimed at correction rather than retribution.

"The logic of medicinal punishment is ancient and coherent and teaches that you do not withhold medicine from a sick person to protect their feelings. You administer it because you love them and because you take their illness seriously."

Massachusetts joins a small club of states with no gestational limits

With Healey's signature, Massachusetts became the tenth state, along with Washington, D.C., to remove all gestational limits on abortion. The other jurisdictions are Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont.

The bill passed the Massachusetts House on July 22 and the Senate on July 31 before reaching Healey's desk, Just The News reported. Under the previous law, abortions after 24 weeks were permitted only to preserve the life or health of the mother or in cases of a "life-limiting" fetal diagnosis, and required a doctor's medical judgment. The new law lowers that threshold to "professional judgment", a broader and less defined standard.

Pro-life critics say the practical effect is abortion on demand at any point in pregnancy. Kelsey Pritchard, communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, put it bluntly: "Massachusetts' new abortion bill is very extreme, legalizing abortion on demand until birth, paid for by taxpayers."

Pritchard added that with Healey's signature, the United States remains one of only eight countries worldwide that allow abortion at any point during pregnancy, a fact that pro-life advocates have used to argue the nation's abortion regime is an international outlier, not a mainstream standard.

Late-term abortions in Massachusetts were already climbing

The debate over H.5595 did not unfold in a vacuum. Late-term abortions in Massachusetts had already nearly doubled, rising from 41 procedures at or beyond 24 weeks in 2022 to 81 in 2023, the Washington Examiner reported. That increase occurred under the old, more restrictive law, raising the question of what the numbers will look like once the new standard takes full effect.

Supporters of the bill argued it was necessary because hospitals had been turning away women who needed care under the existing framework. AP News reported that one case involved a fetus that had suffered a stroke and was unlikely to survive, yet the mother was still denied a late-term procedure under the enumerated list of qualifying conditions.

Opponents counter that the solution, wiping out all gestational limits, goes far beyond addressing hard cases. Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, warned: "While this legislation prioritizes access, it does not prioritize a woman's safety."

Healey herself framed the signing as a defensive measure against potential federal restrictions on abortion. At the ceremony, she declared: "Abortion will remain safe. It will remain legal, and it will remain accessible here in Massachusetts. That's my commitment to you."

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser offered a sharply different view, as Fox News reported: "It should shock the conscience that tens of thousands of unborn Americans are barbarically dismembered limb by limb and torn apart every single year."

Bishops and governor's office stay silent

Neither the Archdiocese of Boston, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, nor the Governor's Office responded to requests for comment before Breitbart's article was published. That silence is itself part of Reinhardt's complaint. Her letter noted that the bishops had issued a press statement after the signing but took no further action, a response she called inadequate.

"When a Catholic governor signs legislation permitting abortion until birth, celebrates that signing publicly, and receives no response from her bishops beyond a press statement, the lesson absorbed by the faithful is not subtle. It is this: this is tolerable and within the range of what a Catholic may do. The line is somewhere further along, and we do not yet know where it is."

Reinhardt added: "That lesson is wrong. And it is being taught every day that it goes uncorrected."

The tension between Catholic politicians who support legal abortion and Church leaders who oppose it is not new. But the CatholicVote letter sharpens the question to its narrowest point: if a Catholic governor who signs a law permitting abortion through all nine months of pregnancy does not trigger the Church's own disciplinary canons, what would?

Janet Morana, executive director of Priests for Life, captured the scene at the signing ceremony in stark terms, as the New York Post reported: "The women who surrounded Healey as she signed this terrible bill smiled and laughed and applauded, celebrating the fact that no baby in the womb is assured of a birthday in Massachusetts."

The new law takes effect in 90 days.

A test for the shepherds

Reinhardt closed her letter with a challenge aimed squarely at the Massachusetts bishops, not at the governor, not at the legislature, but at the men whose job, under Catholic teaching, is to guard the faith and discipline those who publicly defy it.

"The integrity of Catholic witness in public life and the credibility of the claim that Catholic faith is a moral architecture that shapes how one exercises power, depends on the willingness of shepherds to act as shepherds when it matters most."

Whether the bishops answer that challenge or let the silence hold will tell Catholic voters everything they need to know about whether the rules of their own Church apply equally, or only to people without political power.