Massachusetts House Budget Would Provide $500,000 To Private Abortion Funds

By Tom Joyce | April 29, 2022, 10:30 EDT

(Courtesy of Wikimedia)

If the Massachusetts House budget passes, it will mean that taxpayers will be on the hook for more abortions.

Since a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in 1981, public funding in Massachusetts has paid the full cost of abortion for women whose incomes are low enough to qualify for Medicaid; it’s one of 16 states with publicly-funded elective abortions.

However, a current House budget amendment from state representative Thomas Stanley (D-Waltham) would result in even more public funding for abortion.

Amendment 1506 to the fiscal year 2023 House budget would do that; it’s called “Improving Equitable Access To Health Care.”

It would provide a minimum of $500,000 combined to three private abortion funds in the Commonwealth:  the Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts, the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, and the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund.

An abortion fund is an organization that helps pay for women’s abortions if they’re uninsured or their health insurance plan doesn’t cover abortion. 

Reproductive Equity Now (formerly called NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts) government affairs director Claire Teylouni celebrated the revelation in an email message to the organization’s followers on Wednesday afternoon.

“Abortion funds work around the clock to fill systemic gaps in health care coverage and ensure that Bay Staters who need access to abortion care can get it, regardless of cost,” Teylouni said in the email message. “Gaps in insurance coverage result in high out-of-pocket costs for abortion care, and these costs disproportionately impact communities of color. Abortion funds are critical to achieving true reproductive equity, and we are thrilled to see the Massachusetts House support their mission by providing much-needed funding.”

A spokesman for the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund is glad that the amendment would help pay for more abortions. Here is what the spokesman told NewBostonPost via email on Wednesday, April 27:

The Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund (EMA Fund) is thrilled to see that the Massachusetts House of Representatives has adopted a budget amendment to improve access to abortion by supporting Massachusetts’ three abortion funds. EMA and its sister funds, the Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts, and the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, have long been and remain steadfastly committed to working to ensure that everyone who seeks abortion care in Massachusetts — whether they be from Massachusetts, or states with abortion bans, like Texas, or any other state where new barriers to care are being erected every day — has the means to do so.

With the Supreme Court — and its conservative super-majority — poised to weaken or eliminate the protections embodied in Roe v. Wade, and more than half the states ready to restrict further or even ban abortion, Massachusetts is making a bold statement that it stands ready to bolster the right to bodily autonomy in a meaningful way. By supporting the critical work of the abortion funds, the Massachusetts House of Representatives is demonstrating that it understands what it takes to ensure meaningful access for anyone seeking abortion care in the Commonwealth.

Lee Bowie, a spokesman for the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, also told NewBostonPost that the organization is grateful for the proposed funding.

“The Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts is proud to be in a state that recognizes and supports the needs of those seeking abortion health care,” she wrote. “We are always grateful for any funding that helps us meet those needs.”

Conversely, Massachusetts Citizens for Life Patricia Stewart and Tom Harvey, chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance to Stop Public Funding of Abortion, told NewBostonPost that they hope the budget doesn’t pass with this increased public funding for abortion in it.

Harvey said proposals like this one are a good reason to vote legislators out. Here is what he told NewBostonPost by email this week:

The Massachusetts legislature is a disgrace. Under Massachusetts law, until passage of the hideous Roe Act at the end of 2020, abortion had been accurately defined as “the knowing destruction of the life of an unborn child.” But they removed that truthful language. And here the legislature continues its deceit by referring to abortion as “reproductive health care” when the truth is abortion is the bloody murder of an innocent, voiceless child in the womb —which is the exact opposite of health care. And now the legislators want to force Massachusetts taxpayers to pay even more for the continued slaughter of the innocents. It is long past the time for the citizens of Massachusetts to rise up and vote these scoundrels out of office.

Stewart said the money would go to better use supporting mothers with young children.

“The budget amendment, if passed, would create a dangerous precedent,” she told NewBostonPost in an email message. “It is the first time that Massachusetts’ annual budget has included an allocation of monies to invest in abortion funds. These funds would be better used to actually help mothers care for their babies, instead of ending their lives. Massachusetts taxpayers do not support having their taxes used to finance abortion. Legislators will be held to account for this gross misuse of tax dollars. Massachusetts Citizens for Life intends to explore all legal avenues for challenging this process.”

The state already spends more than $2 million on publicly-funded abortions per year, as NewBostonPost has previously reported.

The Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts could not be reached for comment on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday this week.

Nor could Stanley, the sponsor of the amendment. 

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