Massachusetts Lawmakers To Hear Testimony On Expanding Abortion Access

As some states moved to tighten abortion laws or try to ban the procedure outright, there is a push in Massachusetts to remove some restrictions.

A four-hour hearing is scheduled Monday on Beacon Hill to take testimony on a bill known as the ROE Act. There's lots of attention on this — and lots of impassioned testimony expected.

Matt Murphy, State House News Service: We're expecting a press conference from supporters [Monday] morning, and a hearing [the same] afternoon in front of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary.

This is really a controversial bill. We've seen Republicans, in particular the Mass. GOP, fighting against it.

This would expand abortion access in Massachusetts by making what some critics have called "late-term abortions" legal. But essentially, it would make abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy acceptable or allowable in cases where doctors determined that the fetus is no longer viable and unlikely to survive after birth. That is the thrust of this bill.

There are other provisions — some would relax rules regarding access to abortions for minors, and other changes to the state's abortion laws. But it's certainly a different push here in Massachusetts than what we're seeing in other states around the country.

Sam Hudzik, NEPR: What's your sense of the likelihood of this passing? I believe Governor Charlie Baker — a Republican who walks a pretty fine line on abortion policy — has some problems with this.

He does. The governor has been out front in saying he does not think the state's abortion laws need to be changed.

He's a pro-choice Republican. He has signed a number of laws protecting things like health coverage of abortions. They have put more money into place to protect funding for Planned Parenthood and preventative health clinics that were in jeopardy of losing federal funding.

But the governor thinks that this bill might go a step too far.

We have not yet heard any commitment from legislative leaders like the [House] Speaker or the Senate President to advance this bill, but the chief sponsors are Senate President Emerita Harriet Chandler of Worcester, and [House] Speaker Pro-Tem Patricia Haddad of Somerset. So it does have some high-profile supporters in both branches. But the last we heard from Speaker DeLeo, he was waiting to see how this hearing would go, and take it from there.

Let's look now at education funding. Last week, a group of parents from a bunch of communities — including Springfield, Chicopee and Orange — sued the state. They say their schools are chronically and unconstitutionally underfunded. This comes as the governor and legislators are looking to make a deal on education policies, including that funding formula. Is this lawsuit going to help push that debate?

It certainly ramps up the pressure, and it puts in some sort of fallback if the legislature were to fail — as they did in the last session — to get a final new ed funding reform plan across the finish line..

The Senate chair of the education committee, Senator Jason Lewis, had said that he expected and hoped to see the education committee put out an education funding bill this month. The House was less committed to that timeline, but they have been working.

We have seen the chairs of the education committee coming from meetings together, where presumably they are trying to hash out these details. But we have not heard a definitive timeline on when anything might surface.

Sal DiMasi, former Massachusetts House Speaker, is in a fight with Secretary of State Bill Galvin over whether DiMasi should be allowed to register as a lobbyist. DiMasi served federal time for steering state contracts to a software company in exchange for kickbacks. Galvin says there's no way this guy should be allowed to lobby. How is this playing out?

The former Speaker had a preliminary hearing last week and, interestingly, the secretary's office opened up a new line to potentially deny him his ability to lobby on Beacon Hill. [Galvin] interestingly suggested that when Sal DiMasi was Speaker of the House, and for those actions that led to his federal conviction, he should have registered as a lobbyist.

It's an interesting argument that one of the most powerful legislators on Beacon Hill should be required to and failed to register as a lobbyist to lobby... his own legislative branch and the governor. But the Secretary of State says that he will pursue that as a way to block DiMasi from registering to lobby if his other reason for denying the former Speaker doesn't hold up — which is that his federal convictions should be automatic disqualification.

Keep up here with Beacon Hill In 5.