Roe V. Wade Overturned: What Happens Now In MA?

BOSTON — The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. What does that mean for Massachusetts residents?

The Bay State is one of 14 states, plus the District of Columbia, with laws in place protecting the right to an abortion, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. Even with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision reversed, Massachusetts residents can still receive abortion care.

The decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito Jr., was released Friday, more than a month after a draft of the opinion leaked. It will have an immediate impact on abortion rights in 13 states, largely in the South and West, that have laws in place to ban abortion as soon as Roe is overturned.

The state Senate overcame Gov. Charlie Baker's veto to pass the ROE Act in December 2020. The law gives 16- and 17-year-olds the right to receive an abortion in consultation with their health care provider without needing parental permission. It also allows abortions after 24 weeks in cases with a fatal fetal anomaly and in situations when deemed necessary by a doctor.

"Today is a dark day in our history," said state Attorney General and gubernatorial front-runner Maura Healey in reaction to the ruling. "For nearly 50 years, the constitutional right to abortion has saved lives. It is freedom, healing and the chance to live your life on your own terms.

"That will never change, which is why we can never give up on realizing this freedom for all."

The court's repudiation of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and a subsequent case on fetal viability, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was expected. In May, Alito's majority opinion draft was leaked to Politico, setting the stage for a seismic shift in abortion rights.

At least 26 states are certain or likely to make it nearly impossible for a woman to get a procedure that was legal for her mother, grandmother or even great-grandmother, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights research and policy group.

"Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans," former President Barack Obama said in a statement.

With the decision, abortion would be illegal or a nearly impossible procedure to get in about half of U.S. states, including large swaths of the South, Midwest and Northern Plains.

Abortion is already illegal or soon will be in 13 states with pre-existing "trigger" laws banning abortion set to take effect with the dismantling of Roe and Casey, and another four are poised to ban it, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nine have so-called fetal heartbeat laws that make the procedure illegal before many women know they are pregnant.

The Massachusetts Senate also voted in May to adopt an amendment that provides enhanced protections for reproductive and gender-affirming health care in the state, including abortion procedures. The amendment also protects out-of-state residents who travel to Massachusetts for such services.

Abortion rights were long considered settled law; and even as conservative states pushed at-the-time unconstitutional fetal heartbeat laws and others restricting abortion access to bring the court to this moment, many legal scholars doubted a right that generations of women and men had counted on was in serious jeopardy.

The case that made it to a full hearing before the court, Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion, came after President Donald Trump appointed three conservative judges: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and, a few months before his term ended, Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020.

The court heard oral arguments on the Mississippi case in December.

Lawyers for the state of Mississippi had proposed an array of mechanisms to uphold the 15-week abortion ban but said the court ultimately should overturn the "egregiously wrong" Roe and Casey rulings.

If the court "does not impose a substantial obstacle to 'a significant number of women' seeking abortions," the state argued at the time, the justices should reinterpret the "undue burden" standard established in Roe and give the state the authority to "prohibit elective abortions before viability" of the fetus.

• Previously on Patch: MA Among States With Abortion Protection If Roe V. Wade Falls