Massachusetts bishops issue rebuke after governor cites Catholic faith in support of abortion law
Massachusetts’ Catholic bishops rebuked Gov. Maura Healey for putting a broad abortion law into effect immediately and citing her Catholic faith in defending the decision. The law allows abortions at any point in pregnancy based on a physician’s professional judgment, removing earlier restrictions after 24 weeks. The bishops said abortion is not health care, rejected the claim of an emergency, and described the law as reflecting a “utilitarian and merciless approach” to vulnerable human life. Healey’s action blocked a suspension of the law while opponents pursue a statewide referendum expected in November 2028.
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Massachusetts’ Catholic bishops criticized Gov. Maura Healey after she used an emergency preamble to put a broad abortion law into effect immediately, while citing her Catholic faith in defending the decision. Opponents are pursuing a statewide repeal referendum expected in 2028.
Healey signed the measure, Chapter 188, on Aug. 10, then attached an emergency preamble on Nov. 6. Under the state constitution, that made the law effective immediately and prevented it from being suspended while a referendum effort proceeds.
The previous law allowed abortion without a stated gestational limit through 24 weeks, and later in pregnancy in specified circumstances, including threats to the mother’s life or health. Chapter 188 removes those limitations, allowing an abortion at any point in pregnancy based on a physician’s professional judgment.
In a Substack article, Healey said her Catholic faith shaped her understanding of service, dignity and compassion. She also said her responsibility as governor was to ensure families could make medical decisions according to their circumstances, values and doctors’ guidance.
Boston Archbishop Richard Henning and the bishops of Worcester, Fall River and Springfield said they disagreed that abortion should be considered health care or that an emergency justified expanding what they described as an already highly permissive law.
They called on lawmakers and others to reconsider what they described as a “utilitarian and merciless approach” to the elderly, sick, vulnerable and unborn. The bishops also cited Pope Leo XIV’s statements that unborn children belong to the human family and that the right to life is foundational to other human rights.
A Healey spokesman referred questions about the bishops’ criticism to the governor’s Substack article.
Opponents collected more than 100,000 voter signatures to challenge the law—more than twice the number needed to suspend it pending a referendum, absent the emergency preamble. The secretary of state’s office said it expected certification of the signatures to take one or two weeks; the referendum is expected in November 2028.
Healey said voters would have their say and that her administration would respect a decision to repeal the law, while arguing families should not have to wait for care during the referendum process. Massachusetts Citizens for Life president Myrna Maloney Flynn said the group was preparing for a two-year campaign to repeal the law.
Catholic moral teaching on conscience, abortion, and political authority
Catholic teaching holds together three principles: conscience is a judgment that must be formed by moral truth, not a personal power to invent right and wrong; abortion is an intrinsic evil that civil law cannot make morally legitimate; and political authority deserves obedience within its proper limits, but not when it commands or requires cooperation in grave injustice. These principles guide both public officials and voters, while leaving room for prudential judgment about how best to protect life in particular political circumstances.
Conscience is the practical judgment by which a person recognizes the moral quality of a particular act. It therefore matters greatly: a person should not deliberately act against what he or she sincerely judges to be right. But conscience is not simply a feeling, preference, or private authority that makes an action right because someone approves of it. Pope John Paul II describes it as “an instrument for detecting moral truth”: conscience interprets a moral norm; it does not create that norm.
That distinction explains why the Church stresses formation of conscience. A person must seek the truth about an act and examine relevant facts, rather than merely affirm an existing preference. Benedict XVI warns that when conscience is detached from truth and reason, it can become a surface onto which social pressure and propaganda project competing impulses. He therefore emphasizes sustained formation through the Christian community, not merely a fleeting acquaintance with religious teaching.
This does not mean that every concrete political judgment is settled by a general moral principle. Catholics may reach different prudential conclusions about particular policies—judgments about how to apply moral principles to complex circumstances—provided they do not treat fundamental moral duties as optional. The bishops distinguish such policy judgments from universal moral teachings, while insisting that prudence does not make every policy choice equally sound.
The bishops identify intentional abortion as an intrinsically evil act: in Catholic moral language, that means an act that must not be chosen, because its object is incompatible with the good of the human person. They describe it as the intentional taking of innocent human life and reject treating that destruction as merely a matter of individual choice.
The implication is not that abortion is the only important moral concern. Catholic political responsibility also involves other matters affecting human dignity and the common good. But the bishops teach that policies promoting intrinsically evil acts have a special moral weight; opposition to such policies cannot be set aside as though abortion were just one ordinary policy preference among many. At the same time, a candidate’s opposition to abortion does not excuse indifference to other serious issues of life and dignity.
Catholics ordinarily have a duty to respect legitimately constituted public authorities. But civil authority is not unlimited: it cannot turn an act contrary to moral law into a morally good act simply by permitting it. Evangelium Vitae teaches that no human law can legitimize abortion and that there is no conscientious duty to comply with laws that require participation in such grave evil. It also teaches a grave obligation to oppose such laws through conscientious objection.
There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection.
This teaching is not a general license to disobey any law one dislikes. The same passage recalls the Christian duty to obey legitimate authorities, while insisting that obedience to God takes precedence when a human command is unjust. The issue is whether a law or required action conflicts with a fundamental moral obligation—not whether a citizen personally prefers a different policy.
For public officials, the moral responsibility is especially direct when they exercise legislative power. The Church teaches that they must not promote or vote for laws attacking human life. Yet Evangelium Vitae also recognizes a constrained case: where a permissive abortion law cannot be overturned completely, an official who is firmly opposed to abortion may support a proposal that genuinely limits the harm and reduces the law’s harmful effects. This is a step toward greater protection, not approval of the remaining injustice or abandonment of the goal of full protection for unborn life.
The U.S. bishops distinguish between voting to support a candidate’s policy promoting an intrinsically evil act and voting for a candidate for other grave reasons while rejecting that policy. A Catholic may not vote for a candidate with the intention of advancing such a position; the bishops describe that as formal cooperation in grave evil. They also say that a voter may, in some circumstances, choose such a candidate for other truly grave moral reasons, but not merely for narrow interests, partisan preference, or indifference to the fundamental evil.
If every available candidate supports a policy promoting an intrinsic evil, the bishops say a conscientious voter may decide not to vote for any of them or, after careful deliberation, vote for the candidate judged less likely to advance that evil and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods. The choice must be made by the voter’s own well-formed conscience, considering the candidates’ commitments, character, integrity, and capacity to affect the issue.
This is not a formula that automatically identifies the correct candidate in every election. It is a moral framework: reject support for intrinsic evil; do not neglect other serious duties toward human life and dignity; and use prudence to judge the actual choices and likely consequences. Catholics may disagree about some prudential assessments, but they may not use political complexity to erase the underlying moral principles.
A public official’s religious identity or appeal to conscience does not, by itself, establish that a decision is morally sound. Catholic conscience must answer to truth, and political action must be assessed by what it does and supports. Thus, when a public act concerns abortion law, the relevant questions are whether it protects or weakens the protection of human life, whether it promotes an intrinsically evil act, and whether any limited measure is genuinely a step toward reducing injustice rather than an endorsement of it. These principles do not, without the details of a specific law and decision, settle every question about its legal effects or the official’s intentions.