- Massachusetts needs to be more pro-life. But so do we.
On August 10, 2026, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed H.5595. The bill replaced previous 24-week restrictions on abortions with this statement that you could drive a double-wide 18-wheeler through: “an abortion may be performed by a physician based upon the professional judgment of the physician.” In addition, it removed a requirement that abortions occur in hospitals. That state’s abortion industry undoubtedly cheered.
Mississippi has a bit of a different track record on these matters: when a Jackson-based abortion clinic filed suit against the state’s Gestational Age Act and lower court rulings blocked it, Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court. In the end, not only was the Mississippi law upheld, but Roe v. Wade was overturned. This action returned the authority to regulate abortion to the individual states. Alas, in places like Massachusetts that simply means that the abortion law is now in the court of immoral politicians.
There are all kinds of biblical, moral, and practical reasons why Massachusetts not only got it wrong, but in passing this law has perpetrated evil.
Biblically, that child in the womb is a person. Jeremiah was told by God that even before he was in the womb “I knew you.” John the Baptist is called a brephos (Luke 1:41, 44) – a baby while still in the womb, the same term used for the newborn Jesus in Luke.
Foundationally, in Genesis and the creation narrative every human life is made in the image of God. Based on the Law in Exodus, “You shall not murder” has meant that throughout Christian history there has been an almost unanimous voice against destruction of a boy or girl in the womb:
- The early church discipleship manual called The Didache: “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.”
- Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–190): “Those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God.”
- Tertullian – (c. 155–220): “To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing.”
- Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215): Concerning abortifacient drugs – They “destroy the offspring” and simultaneously “abort their human feelings.”
- Basil the Great (330–379): “The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder.”
- John Chrysostom (c. 347–407): “Why then do you abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws?” Abortion, he said, is something “even worse than murder.”
- Martin Luther (1483–1546): God is “at work in all the organs” and “fashioning the child.”
- John Calvin (1509–1564): “The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being…It ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945): “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life.”
- Mother Teresa (1910–1997): “The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.” And, rather famously, “Please don’t destroy the child; we will take the child.”
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity meant that last line. Mississippi Civil Rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer said and lived basically the same thing: “I believe that legal abortion is legal murder…Now they talk about birth control and abortion for blacks. If they’d been talking that way when my mother was bearing children, I wouldn’t be here now.” She raised many children (not her own) as did many of her neighbors; she begged people to bring their unwanted little ones to her.
Mississippi, over and against Massachusetts, has an enviable upper moral hand on the topic of abortion. But that is not enough. We need more than prohibition. We need laws and pulpits that discourage fatherlessness in this state where the rate is higher than anywhere else in the nation. We need improved maternal and neonatal medicine; enhanced financial and pastoral support; practical help for families continuing difficult pregnancies; forgiveness and healing for those who have undergone abortions.
Massachusetts needs to be more pro-life. But so do we.
We need our pro-life state to become even more pro-life, valuing each person in and out of the womb as created and loved by God.
Matt Friedeman
