Early Monday morning on August 10, 2026, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act into law, expanding access to abortion later in pregnancy and removing the state’s previous 24-week gestational limit. Under the new law, healthcare providers can determine whether abortion care is medically appropriate based on their professional judgment.
Previously, Massachusetts law generally limited abortion access to the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, creating a significant barrier for those seeking later-stage care. After that point, physicians could provide abortion care only under limited circumstances, including when necessary to preserve a patient’s life or physical or mental health, in cases of a lethal fetal diagnosis, or when the fetus was unlikely to survive outside the uterus.
Even within these exceptions, patients were sometimes denied care. State Representative Christine Barber shared that hospitals were still denying patients access to abortions, even when a fetus was determined unlikely to survive outside the uterus. As a result, Massachusetts patients were forced to leave the state, sometimes as far as the Southwest, to access the care they needed.
The new law changes that. As ACLU of Massachusetts Executive Director Carl Rose affirmed, Massachusetts residents facing dire medical complications can now receive essential healthcare without these rigid in-state limitations.
Massachusetts is now the 10th state, including Washington, D.C., to no longer have gestational limits on abortion access. That change could also make Massachusetts a “destination” for patients from states where abortion remains heavily restricted, particularly for those seeking care later in pregnancy.
Unfortunately, 13 states still enforce strict abortion bans at any stage of pregnancy, even though they claim there are exceptions to these rules. Across the country, vague or restrictive abortion laws have created uncertainty about when providers can legally provide care, leaving patients to bear the consequences.
Massachusetts’ new law represents an important recognition that abortion is health care and that decisions about pregnancy should be made by patients in consultation with their healthcare providers, not dictated by arbitrary legal restrictions.
But state-level protections alone cannot guarantee equitable access to abortion.
Although Massachusetts has taken a much-appreciated step to assert what we know to be true, that abortion is healthcare, there is still more work to be done. It is not enough to have examples of abortion protections at the state level; it is critical to have abortion protections across every border within the United States.
