(ETH) – Massachusetts made headlines a few days ago with a rare magnitude 4.0 earthquake that struck near Bliss Corner, a section of Dartmouth, and was felt across Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Now they are back in the headlines again but this time, Massachusetts lawmakers are now working to insert an amendment into the state budget that would allow abortion up until the moment of birth.
According to the report from the Christian Post, State Representative Claire Cronin, the co-chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, filed Amendment 759, which would be added to the annual budget bill. This comes as the leadership of both houses of the Massachusetts General Court has come out in favor of the amendment, which is similar to the ROE Act that failed.
“Following last week’s joint statement with Senate President Spika, in which we have expressed concern over the threat to women’s reproductive rights on the national level, it is urgent that the House take up an immediate measure to remove barriers to women’s reproductive health options and protect the concepts enshrined in Roe v. Wade,” state House Speaker Robert DeLeo said in a statement Monday.
This statement came just a week after he argued that the state budget was “not an appropriate place for major policy reform.” The report states that Bill S.1209, “An Act to Remove Obstacles and Expand Abortion Access” (ROE Act), was introduced on Jan. 22, 2019, on the 46th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide.
If this amendment gets passed, the bill would allow doctors to perform abortions when “the patient is beyond 24 weeks from the commencement of pregnancy and the abortion is necessary to protect the patient’s life or physical or mental health, or in cases of lethal fetal abnormalities, or where the fetus is incompatible with sustained life outside the uterus.”