Catholic group demands Massachusetts Gov Maura Healey be excommunicated over law allowing abortion up to birth

A leading Catholic group has called for the excommunication of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey after the Democratic head of state signed a bill into law that allows for greater access to abortion up until the moment of birth. 

Healey, who claims to be Catholic, signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act on Aug. 10, making it law in Massachusetts. The bill allows for greater access to abortion after the baby has reached 24 weeks, or the point of viability.

Before Healey signed the bill into law, the state allowed abortions up until 24 weeks. After that point, a physician could only perform an abortion if they determined that the mother's life was in jeopardy or in the case of fetal demise. After November 8, those restrictions will be removed.

The organization CatholicVote wrote in an open letter to the bishops of Massachusetts that under Catholic Church tradition, Healey excommunicated herself by signing the act into law.

The letter was penned by CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt to the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts, asking them to clarify Healey's automatic excommunication.

"By the very fact of doing this — no one has to proclaim you excommunicated — you've done something so contrary to the faith that you've actually excommunicated yourself," Reinhardt told Fox News. "The question is whether the governor signing this law makes her an accomplice in the public expansion of abortion."

Reinhardt, who is also the mother of a baby who was born at 35 weeks, said that under the law, her baby could have been aborted. "There's absolutely no reason ever to kill a child that has absolute viability in life and no reason to kill an innocent child in the womb. That's considered a grave sin by the Catholic Church and by natural reason as well," she added.

Healey signed the bill to thunderous applause of abortion activists who stood by, ready to celebrate. Reinhardt saw that as particularly egregious.

"She didn't have to sign this law, and she didn't have to sign it in the way she signed it, which was gravely scandalous as a Catholic, with people applauding around her the death of a baby, as I mentioned, that could be born today, tomorrow, yesterday with no difficulties," she added.

After the bill was signed, the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts made a joint statement calling the law a “radical measure which is gravely immoral."

Reinhardt said the statement does not go far enough. "The church has at its ability within the Catholic Church, this medicinal remedy for sin, which is excommunication," she said. "And if this does not cross the line of grave evil and the celebration of public grave evil, I question if there is anything that does."

She said that excommunicating Healey would be a call to repentance. "You cannot be pro-abortion and Catholic at the same time,” she added.

Healey has defended the law as something that is merely women’s “healthcare.”

"The bottom line for people in Massachusetts — if you care about women's health, if you care about making sure that women are able to access the health care that they need in consultation with their doctors — should be clear," Healey said when the bill passed. "I stand with women. My opponents do not."