In a press conference ahead of the anticipated hearing on a bill to expand abortion access, Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad denounced accusations of infanticide by anti-abortion activists who gathered garbed in red on the other side of the State House walls.
“There is no other way than to say that they’re untrue. They’re totally untrue,” Haddad said. “Every pregnancy that you are told the fetus cannot live outside the womb is a wanted pregnancy, so when the accusations are that we, as the supporters of this bill, believe that we would commit infanticide is absolutely outrageous.”
Pro-life protestors standing on the steps of the State House held signs siting bible verses, chanting “Amen” and encouraging people to sign a petition over a bill that “would permit infanticide.”
Meanwhile, legislators who support and filed the complimenting bills in the House and Senate argued that the legislation is meant to help a small population of people who are diagnosed with a lethal fetal anomaly and told that the fetus will not survive outside the womb.
“We shouldn’t make, force them to make the decisions they’re making today, which is to carry that pregnancy… or leave the state,” Rep. Jay Livingstone said. “They should be able to make the health care choice right here in Massachusetts with the doctor that’s dealing with their pregnancy.”
“I’m getting afraid,” Senate President Emerita Harriette Chandler said. “We’re lucky to live in Massachusetts, but unfortunately the right to safe and legal abortion is as fickle as a courts opinion and for me, that’s really not good enough.”
