Massachusetts Abortion Law: A Warning for Virginia

One governor’s pen ended the debate in Massachusetts. In Virginia, the pen is still in your hand.

By Jeff Bayard, Content Manager, Virginia Christian Alliance

Yesterday, in Massachusetts, the culture of death held a signing ceremony. And it applauded.

On August 10, Governor Maura Healey signed a law that erased her state’s remaining limits on late-term abortion, making Massachusetts the eleventh state in the country with no gestational limit at all. She signed it in public, at a ceremony, to applause from advocacy groups and medical societies, and she framed it as returning the decision to a woman and her doctor. Dr. Albert Mohler, on his daily program The Briefing, called it what it is. Moral insanity. I want you to watch what he said, and then I want you to see why it lands squarely on Virginia.

The Two Cultures

Mohler draws the line the Bible draws. There is a culture of life, in which every human being is treated as sacred from the moment of fertilization to natural death. And there is a culture of death, which prizes personal autonomy so highly that it will end the life of another to secure it. The Massachusetts law is the second culture, unashamed, and celebrating.

Listen for the language, because language is where the deception hides. The decision, we are told, now belongs to “a woman and her physician.” It sounds humane. But strip the euphemism and here is the claim underneath: a child fully formed in the womb has no standing and no voice, right up until birth, and then, having traveled a few inches, becomes a person with the full protection of law. Mohler’s word for that is the right one. A human being’s worth cannot depend on which side of the birth canal the baby happens to be on.

What Massachusetts Did by Statute, Virginia Is Asked to Do by Constitution

Now bring it home. What Massachusetts just did, it did by statute — a law the legislature can revisit and a future one could change. What Virginia is being asked to do on November 3 is far harder to undo, because it is not a statute. It is a constitutional amendment.

The amendment, HJ1, would write a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including abortion, into Article I of the Virginia Constitution — our Bill of Rights — and set it behind strict scrutiny, the highest legal standard we have. On the third trimester, it follows the very path Massachusetts just took. Today, Virginia law requires the performing physician and two consulting physicians to certify that continuing the pregnancy would kill the mother or substantially and irremediably impair her physical or mental health. The amendment reduces that to the judgment of a single physician, drops the “substantially and irremediably” standard, and sets no ceiling for how far along the pregnancy is.

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I keep my convictions and my facts in separate hands, as I always try to. My conviction is that this is the taking of an image-bearer’s life, and I grieve it. The facts in the paragraph above are simply the text, and you can read them for yourself.

The One Difference That Changes Everything

Here is the difference between Massachusetts and Virginia, and it is everything.

In Massachusetts, the people never touched this. One governor lifted one pen at one ceremony, and it was done. No ballot, no vote, no recourse for the citizen who grieved it. It was decided for them.

Virginia is not Massachusetts. No governor signs a constitutional amendment. Governor Spanberger supports it, and the Democratic majority that now controls Richmond passed it through the General Assembly twice and placed it on the ballot — but they cannot finish it. They do not hold the pen. You do. On November 3, the pen that Massachusetts handed to its governor, Virginia hands to you.

That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing. Moses set the same choice before a nation: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The choice was theirs to make. On November 3, this one is yours.

Let Me Be Fair

The governor of Massachusetts did not speak of convenience. She spoke of heartache — of families receiving devastating diagnoses late in a wanted pregnancy, and of the anguish of being sent out of state in the worst moment of their lives. That anguish is real, and any Christian who waves it away has forgotten how to weep with those who weep.

But grant the hard case its full weight, and the law still reaches far past it. As Mohler observes, removing every limit does not write a rule only for the rare tragedy; it writes a rule for every case, healthy mother and healthy child included. And a constitutional right is not a narrow exception carved out for grief. It is a wall. Once it is built into our Bill of Rights, no legislature and no court in Virginia can take it down.

The Citizen Is Responsible

Back in January I wrote that the citizen is responsible — that we cannot outsource this to politicians and then mourn the result. Charles Finney said the same of preachers: if the pulpit is silent, the pulpit is responsible. On this question, in this state, I would add only that the citizen is responsible too, because in Virginia the citizen is the one who votes.

Scripture does not leave us guessing about the child. “You knitted me together in my mother’s womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13–14). Every one of them bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27). And we are told plainly what to do with what we now know: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?” (Proverbs 24:11–12). He weighs the heart. He knows the difference between the citizen who could not stop this and the citizen who would not look up.

So look up. Watch what Mohler said. Then do the thing Massachusetts could not do — walk into the booth on November 3 and choose life. And put the Plea in your pastor’s hand, because he still has a trumpet to blow.

Massachusetts had a dark day. Virginia still has a choice. Let us not waste it.