A leading Catholic advocacy group is calling on Massachusetts bishops to excommunicate Gov. Maura Healey after the Democrat signed legislation removing restrictions on late-term abortions, allowing for abortions up until birth.
Healey, a Catholic, signed the "Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act" on Aug. 10. The measure gives physicians greater judgment in determining whether to perform late-term abortions without facing legal penalties.
Previously, Massachusetts permitted abortions after 24 weeks only if a physician determined it was necessary to preserve the mother’s physical or mental health, save her life, or in cases of fatal fetal diagnoses. When the new law takes effect Nov. 8, those statutory restrictions will be removed, aligning Massachusetts with states like Colorado, Maryland, and Oregon that have no gestational limits.
The advocacy group CatholicVote argued that by enacting the law, Healey committed a grave sin and should be barred from the sacraments.
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CatholicVote president Kelsey Reinhardt wrote an open letter to the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts, asking them to clarify whether Governor Healey's actions incurred automatic excommunication under church law.
Reinhardt pointed to canon law, which dictates that anyone who procures an abortion, or assists someone in procuring one, incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) 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 Digital in an interview. "The question is whether the governor signing this law makes her an accomplice in the public expansion of abortion."
Reinhardt, the mother to a child who was born at 35 weeks gestation, noted that under this law, a child at the same gestation could be 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 told Fox News Digital.
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She said Healey's public bill-signing ceremony, where abortion advocates smiled and applauded next to her, was particularly egregious for a Catholic politician.
"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," Reinhardt added.
After the bill was passed in the state House of Representatives in July, the Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts released a joint statement on July 29, calling the proposed legislation "a radical measure which is gravely immoral." The letter was signed by the four Catholic bishops of Massachusetts, representing Boston, Worcester, Fall River, and Springfield.
However, Reinhardt argued that a statement of condemnation 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."
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Reinhardt said the ultimate goal of ex-communication is repentance and reconciliation.
"It's not a punishment, it's medicinal," she explained. "It's a call to help you wake up and say, 'Oh my goodness, I've done something that puts me outside of my faith.'"
"You cannot be pro-abortion and Catholic at the same time," Reinhardt added.
Other religious figures made similar calls for action. Bishop Ceirion H. Dewar, an Anglican missionary bishop, wrote on X, "There is absolutely no way to justify administering the sacrament to Governor Healey now. She must be excommunicated immediately by the Holy Father!"
The Governor's Office, the Archdiocese of Boston, and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Healey has defended the legislation as a vital protection for 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 during the bill's passage. "I stand with women. My opponents do not."
Healey also framed the legislation as a "shield" against national efforts under President Donald Trump and Republicans to roll back abortion protections following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Massachusetts now joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont in removing gestational age limits on abortion, along with the District of Columbia.
Fox News' Bonny Chu contributed to this report.