Boston Globe | The abortion debate is happening here in Massachusetts politics, too

By Stephanie Ebbert
Story Originally Appeared in the Boston Globe’s Beyond Roe Newsletter

You might think we wouldn’t be debating abortion rights this election season in Massachusetts, where protections have been enacted into state law twice in two years.

But abortion rights advocates put candidates on notice last week that they intend to make abortion the focus of midterm elections everywhere.

“This year, across the country, reproductive freedom is on the ballot and Massachusetts is no exception,” Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, said in a press release Thursday.

Just two days after the primary, Reproductive Equity Now and Planned Parenthood both went after the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Geoff Diehl, for his stance on abortion. Nate Horwitz-Willis, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts, called Diehl’s candidacy “a grave threat to patients and providers.”

Planned Parenthood noted Diehl has been endorsed by Massachusetts Citizens for Life, an anti-abortion group, and that as a legislator, he co-sponsored a bill that could have sent a doctor who performed an intact dilation and evacuation abortion procedure to prison for five years. Last month, as my colleague Samantha J. Gross memorably documented, Diehl campaigned with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who stood by her own state’s strict abortion ban when asked whether a 10-year-old rape victim should be compelled to have a baby.

In a statement this week, Diehl said he supported the Supreme Court’s decision to return the abortion issue to the states and opposed his own state’s decision to protect abortion rights in state law in 2020. “I believe in the importance of protecting innocent life whenever possible,” Diehl said.

As governor, he said, he would work to reverse the provisions of the 2020 law that lowered the age for abortion without parental consent to 16 and allowed abortions after 24 weeks in cases where it was determined a fetus could not survive.

In this unpredictable election climate, abortion rights groups say they’re taking nothing for granted and intend to mobilize behind Democrat Maura Healey, calling her a national leader on the issue.

Healey and other women candidates nearly swept the Democratic primaries in statewide races on Tuesday, claiming all but one of six of the party’s nominations to constitutional offices, while Republicans backed women for two. Political analysts said it represented a sea change for Massachusetts, which has not been a national leader in women’s political representation, and points to a midterm cycle in which women voters will play an outsized role.

Abortion rights advocates are also pushing the issue in New Hampshire, where the primary is Tuesday. New Hampshire is now the only New England state that has not enacted state protections for abortion post-Roe, and Republican Governor Chris Sununu is being criticized for signing new restrictions on abortion last year after saying he wouldn’t.

In January, New Hampshire banned abortion after 24 weeks without exceptions for rape, incest, or fatal fetal diagnoses, but only to protect a patient’s life or health. It also required patients to look at ultrasounds, a move that’s seen as discouraging abortions. Months later, the law was amended to remove the ultrasound requirement and add an exception for abortions after 24 weeks in cases where a fetus has been diagnosed with “abnormalities incompatible with life.” The change hasn’t stopped Democratic challenger Dr. Tom Sherman from challenging Sununu on the bill he did sign.

Perhaps the most interesting nuance of the season came from New Hampshire congressional candidate Gail Huff Brown, the former longtime Boston TV reporter and the wife of former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. A self-described conservative, she recently launched an ad that used her own harrowing labor experience to speak up for abortion rights, while at the same time advertising her personal willingness to die for her baby.

“I was rushed to the emergency room where the doctor looked me in the eye and asked: ‘Whose life do we save?’ I chose my unborn child,” she says in the ad, which made news last week. “But in that agonizing moment, I was comforted to know, I had a choice.”

Abortion actually is on the ballot this November in four states — California, Kentucky, Montana and Vermont — and possibly a fifth, although the picture is still muddled in Michigan.