Thank You to the Nine

I’ve always argued that life is the more bipartisan belief. Most days, the noise coming out of statehouses and cable news makes that argument hard to prove. This week, of all places, Massachusetts proved it.

Gov. Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act this week, a bill that passed the state House 119-33 and eliminates statutory gestational limits on abortion, leaving the decision to a physician’s “professional medical judgment” at any point in a pregnancy, with expanded legal protection built in.

Healey framed it as compassion, insisting families facing late complications shouldn’t have to leave the state to get care. State Rep. Jeffrey Turco of Winthrop framed it rather differently, and more accurately: “It allows abortion anytime, unrestricted, and in many cases, publicly funded until the moment of birth.”

He didn’t stop there.

“This new law represents an extremist and dangerous position,” he told Fox News Digital. “This law is barbaric.”

Read that twice.

That’s not a Republican talking point. That’s a Democrat, representing a Democratic district, in one of the bluest legislatures in America, using the word barbaric to describe his own party’s bill.

He wasn’t alone.

Nine House Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against this thing alongside every Republican in the chamber. State Rep. Chris Markey of Dartmouth called it “a very slippery slope” that puts doctors in an impossible ethical position and said plainly that you can be pro-choice and still see this law as “going beyond the norms of acceptability.”

State Rep. Alan Silvia of Bristol pointed out an irony too sharp to ignore: “We go to extraordinary lengths as a society to protect vulnerable life, saving whales and saving strays, yet when it comes to an unborn child, that same sense of protection too often seems to disappear.”

He’s right.

We’ll mobilize people, money, and entire agencies to save an animal in distress. We’ll celebrate the rescue. We’ll cheer the people who pulled it off.

But an unborn child?

Apparently, that’s where compassion becomes complicated.

State Rep. Dennis Gallagher wrestled with his vote and landed somewhere honest, too: existing law already allowed late-term abortion to protect the mother’s health or in cases of severe fetal anomaly. This bill didn’t need to exist to accomplish anything humane. Gallagher put the question more simply. If the mother is healthy and the baby is healthy, “I just think alternatives should be encouraged for that baby.”

That shouldn’t be a radical sentence.

And that’s what makes what Massachusetts just did so difficult to understand. The prior law already permitted abortion past 24 weeks when the mother’s health was genuinely at risk, or the fetus had a severe anomaly. The heartbreaking cases were already accounted for.

The legislature went further anyway.

It removed the statutory gestational framework and left the decision to “professional medical judgment.”

That’s why the nine matter.

They didn’t stop the bill. They weren’t even close. It passed easily, and it’s now law.

But nine Democrats looked at legislation their governor wanted, legislation their party overwhelmingly supported, and said no.

Publicly.

On the record.

In Massachusetts.

I don’t care what letter somebody puts after his or her name when courage shows up. I’ll applaud it when I see it. And nine Democratic lawmakers deserve some applause this week.

The imago dei — the idea that every human being carries the image of God and therefore inherent, non-negotiable worth — isn’t a Republican doctrine or a Democrat doctrine. It’s older than either party and bigger than both of them combined.

That belief doesn’t become less true because a party platform changes. A child’s worth doesn’t rise or fall according to polling. Human dignity isn’t something a legislature grants.

It precedes the legislature.

For one legislative session, in the unlikeliest of places, nine Democrats in Massachusetts remembered that before their party leadership reminded them to forget it.

So today, of all the things I could write about, I want to say something simple to nine people who will probably never read this column.

Thank you.

Thank you for seeing plainly what this law does. Thank you for saying so out loud when silence would have been easier. Thank you for demonstrating that conscience can still occasionally win an argument with party loyalty.

Massachusetts may be a long way from where I’d like to see it on this issue.

But nine people just proved the conscience isn’t dead there yet.

That’s worth noticing.

And today, it’s worth saying thank you.

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