The office for Democrat Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey responded to calls for her to excommunicated from the Catholic Church for legalizing abortion up until birth in the state.
Healey, who identifies as lesbian and is a self-proclaimed Catholic, signed a bill on Aug. 10 called the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act or H. 5595, which allows unborn babies to be aborted throughout pregnancy up until birth and strikes down the state’s 24-week limit, which had exceptions for the life of the mother and deadly fetal diagnoses. Under the bill, doctors have the discretion to decide whether or not to perform a late-term abortion.
The governor was surrounded by a gaggle of grinning women who applauded ecstatically as she signed the radical bill. Healey’s stamp of approval aligned Massachusetts with Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington, DC, in allowing unborn babies to be aborted up to the moment of birth.
After she signed the bill into law, Healey immediately faced calls to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. LifeSite launched an online petition calling on Boston Archbishop Richard Henning to excommunicate her — a petition which reached more than 25,000 signatures by Monday morning.
CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt also sent a letter on Wednesday to the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts calling for Healey to be excommunicated and asking for the Church to provide clarification and guidance to people of faith.
“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,” Reinhardt wrote. “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.”
“That lesson is wrong. And it is being taught every day that it goes uncorrected,” she added. “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.”
The Archdiocese of Boston and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference did not previously respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Healey’s office told the Boston Herald that Healey is a “governor for all people of all faiths.” Healey’s office did not respond to Breitbart’s previous request for comment.
“As a proud Catholic, she believes everyone is deserving of kindness and empathy, especially in their time of need,” the spokesperson reportedly said.
“She believes that those women and families should have been able to get the care they needed here in Massachusetts, and it was unfair to force them to travel to other states,” the spokesperson continued.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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