Governor Maura Healey on Friday used her executive authority to deem an abortion law she signed in August an emergency, putting it into effect immediately and blocking an attempt by anti-abortion activists to suspend the measure.
The first-term Democrat took the action about a week after activists who opposed the law said they had collected enough signatures to temporarily halt it and put a question on the 2028 ballot asking voters to repeal the law.
The law, which the Legislature passed in July, makes it easier for women to receive an abortion later in their pregnancies by reshaping the rules for how women can terminate their pregnancies at 24 weeks or later. It was originally slated to take effect this upcoming Sunday.
Healey — who was overwhelmingly reelected Tuesday after running, in part, as a champion of abortion rights — wrote in a letter Friday that any delay in implementing the law “would prolong uncertainty for patients, families, physicians and health care institutions, and risk further harm to the health and safety of women in Massachusetts.”
“The promise of the act must not be delayed when patients are already experiencing the consequences of the existing restrictions,” Healey wrote in the letter to Secretary of State William F. Galvin. “I therefore declare that it is in the public interest that the act take effect immediately, and I declare that act to be an emergency law.”
The conservative groups that led the repeal effort — Massachusetts Citizens for Life and Massachusetts Family Action — said last week that they gathered nearly 100,000 signatures, far surpassing the more than 37,000 needed to put a measure to repeal it before voters in 2028 and the 12,430 more to potentially suspend the law in the interim.
The campaign had until Friday to submit the paperwork to the Secretary of State’s office, which must confirm it collected enough certified signatures to qualify the measure.
Sam Miele, Massachusetts Family Action’s director, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
State law has allowed abortions after 24 weeks only under specific circumstances, including to preserve a patient’s life. But the new law leaves the decision to end a pregnancy entirely to “the professional judgment of a physician,” making Massachusetts’ laws among the country’s broadest.
Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, told the Globe earlier this week that nine patients have had to leave the state for emergency abortions after 24 weeks since Healey signed the bill in August.
“There are actual people whose lives are on the line,” Rose said.
Healey on Friday attached a so-called “emergency preamble” to the law, which puts the statute into effect immediately. As recently as Wednesday, Healey told reporters that her office was still “evaluating” whether to declare the law a measure, noting she had to “get through [the election] last night, and a lot’s been going on.”
In her letter to Galvin on Friday, Healey said “dozens of patients facing devastating diagnoses or other complex circumstances” late in pregnancy are “forced” to decide whether to leave Massachusetts to receive care or forgo it all together.
“Many who do leave the state face out-of-pocket costs reaching tens of thousands of dollars, along with the burden of travel far from their doctors, families, and supporter networks,” Healey wrote. “All of this occurs because our law, as currently in effect, wrongly interferes with the health care decisions of women and their doctors.”
The law had been a flashpoint in the governor’s race between Healey and Republican nominee Michael Minogue.
During their final debate earlier last month, moderators asked Minogue whether he would support the effort to repeal the law. Minogue, who has described himself as pro-life, said he would “obey the law. I will follow the law,” but he did not take a stand on the repeal effort specifically.
“I believe in the separation of church and state,” he said. “Now, I am still allowed to have my own beliefs, but my own beliefs will not get in the way of me doing what I’m supposed to do in upholding the law.”
Healey quickly attacked, saying she trusts women to make decisions and charging that “Mike Minogue doesn’t.”
During the campaign, Healey also framed preserving access to abortion as not just a social issue, but also an economic one in a state that’s simultaneously emerged as a major national provider of abortion care. Healey cruised to a second term on Tuesday, capturing 62 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results.
There’s precedent for the governor declaring a law an emergency. Second Amendment rights groups collected enough signatures in 2024 to immediately suspend and place on this year’s ballot a referendum that would repeal a sweeping gun control law that lawmakers passed that year.
But days before gun rights groups were due to turn in signatures, Healey declared the law an “emergency,” a move that drew intense backlash from those behind the repeal effort.
Voters overwhelmingly rejected the repeal effort in Tuesday’s election, with more than 67 percent opting to keep a law that, among other things, prohibited people from carrying guns in polling places and government buildings, and raised the minimum age for buying semiautomatic rifles and shotguns from 18 to 21.
Chris Van Buskirk can be reached at chris.vanb@globe.com. Follow him on X @byChrisVan Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross.