I’ve been thinking about this Massachusetts abortion law probably more than I expected to.

On August 10, Massachusetts approved Chapter 188, changing the law surrounding abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy. Previously, the law listed specific circumstances for abortions after that point: situations involving the life or health of the mother and certain severe fetal diagnoses. The new law removes that list and says instead that:

“an abortion may be performed by a physician based upon the professional judgment of the physician.”

The law also says that:

“No medical review process shall override the professional judgment”

of the treating physician together with the patient or health-care proxy.

I understand what supporters are arguing. Pregnancy can become medically complicated very quickly. There are horrible diagnoses. There are situations where doctors are trying to make decisions in circumstances nobody ever wanted to face. Supporters of the law believe the previous categories were too rigid and that doctors should have more room to make those decisions individually.

Okay. I understand the argument.

But I still keep coming back to the same thing.

There is a child involved.

And I feel like we keep finding more sophisticated ways to talk around that.

Twenty-four weeks was never the moment when the baby suddenly became human. It was a number written into a law. The child was human before twenty-four weeks, and the child is human afterward. Changing what the statute permits does not change what is actually there.

That is where I get stuck.

If we are talking about pregnancy after twenty-four weeks, what exactly are we pretending not to know anymore?

The baby did not become less developed. It did not somehow become less human at twenty-five weeks. The law became broader. The child did not change.

And I think at some point we have to stop hiding behind legal language long enough to ask the most basic question possible:

What are we doing to another human being?

“Professional judgment” does not answer every question

The phrase that keeps coming up in the new law is “professional judgment.”

I respect doctors. Of course I do. They know more about pregnancy, fetal development, maternal complications, surgery, medication, prognosis, and medical emergencies than I ever will.

If I have a medical problem, I want a physician.

But I don’t understand when we decided that medical expertise also settles the moral worth of another human being.

Those are not the same question.

A doctor can tell me what is happening medically. A doctor can tell me what the prognosis is. A doctor can explain risks and complications and treatment options.

But the question, “When is it morally acceptable intentionally to end an innocent human life?” is not simply a medical question.

That is a moral question.

And as a Christian, my answer cannot ultimately be, “Well, a professional decided.”

Professionals are still human.

Politicians are human.

Institutions are human.

Experts are human.

People can be brilliant in one field and still be terribly wrong about morality.

We have enough history behind us to know that credentials do not make the conscience infallible.

So when I hear that the decision is being left to “professional judgment,” my response is not that physicians have no judgment worth respecting.

My response is: professional judgment about what?

About medical risk? Absolutely.

About treatment options? Absolutely.

About whether another human being possesses enough value to deserve protection?

That is where I stop.

Because no medical degree gives someone the authority to create human dignity or take it away.

Scripture makes my starting point pretty clear

I’m a Christian, so I’m not going to pretend I’m approaching this from some completely neutral moral position.

I believe God has spoken about human life.

The commandment is simple:

“You shall not murder.” — Exodus 20:13

I know people can immediately get into arguments over terminology, definitions, viability, personhood, and every other philosophical category surrounding abortion.

Those questions matter.

But Scripture also speaks about life in the womb in deeply personal terms.

David writes:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” — Psalm 139:13

And later:

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance.” — Psalm 139:16

That changes the way I understand this completely.

Human dignity is not something the government hands out.

It does not arrive because someone is wanted.

It does not appear because someone can survive independently.

It does not disappear because the person is sick, disabled, dependent, inconvenient, unexpected, or unable to speak for himself.

The child’s worth comes from God.

That is why another verse keeps coming back to me:

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.” — Proverbs 31:8

And come on—if there is ever a human being who literally cannot speak for himself, it is the child in the womb.

That does not mean every pregnancy is easy. It does not mean every medical situation has a clean answer. It does not mean Christians should scream at people who are already terrified.

But difficulty does not erase humanity.

Complication does not erase humanity.

A painful circumstance does not make a human life become something else.

Mercy does not mean pretending nothing happened

This is also where I want to be very careful, because I do not want anything I am saying to be mistaken for hatred toward women who have had abortions.

That is not Christianity.

Some women were terrified.

Some were pressured.

Some were very young.

Some had boyfriends or husbands telling them they had no other option.

Some believed completely that abortion was morally acceptable because that is what they had been told their whole lives.

Some regret it.

Some may carry grief they have never told anybody about.

And some may not regret it at all.

I am not God. I cannot see every heart, every circumstance, every degree of knowledge or pressure involved in every individual decision.

But compassion does not require me to soften what I believe happened.

An innocent human life was intentionally ended. I believe that is a grave sin before God, whether or not the law calls it a crime.

That is the part I do not want to blur.

At the same time, Christianity does not tell me to look at the person who sinned and treat them like garbage.

If that were Christianity, none of us would have any hope.

The Gospel exists because sin is real.

Christ does not forgive us by pretending nothing happened. He forgives because something did happen and because grace is greater than our sin.

So if a woman has had an abortion, I do not believe she is beyond Christ.

Not remotely.

There is repentance.

There is forgiveness.

There is healing.

There is restoration.

There is grace.

But grace does not erase the need for truth.

Mercy for the woman. Protection for the child.

I don’t understand why we are constantly told we have to choose one.

And no, the responsibility is not only hers

Actually, one of the things that bothers me most about the abortion conversation is how easily all the responsibility gets dumped onto the woman.

A culture does not arrive at something like this through one person.

There are doctors.

There are politicians.

There are advocacy organizations.

There are institutions.

There are partners who pressure women into abortions.

There are families who tell a daughter that having the baby will destroy her life.

There are voters who support these policies.

There are public figures who celebrate them.

There are ordinary people who may never personally have an abortion but knowingly defend and normalize it.

That does not mean everybody carries exactly the same guilt. Of course not.

Knowledge matters.

Intent matters.

Pressure matters.

Circumstances matter.

God can judge all of that perfectly. I cannot.

But Scripture even talks about people who do not necessarily commit an act themselves but “give approval to those who practice them.” — Romans 1:32

That verse should bother us.

Because it means morality is not always as simple as saying, “Well, I personally didn’t do it.”

A culture is built collectively.

It is built out of what we normalize.

What we defend.

What we celebrate.

What we stop questioning.

What we become embarrassed to call wrong.

And eventually what we decide must actually be good.

This is where the language started bothering me

This is where my thoughts started connecting to something I’ve been writing. 

I recently finished the first draft of a dystopian story called The Word 4 Murder.

The book is not specifically an abortion novel. It is much broader than that.

But the question underneath it is something I cannot stop thinking about:

What happens when we cannot change what happened, so we change what people are allowed to call it?

Because human beings are very good at this.

We rationalize.

We rename.

We find language that makes something easier to live with.

And I want to be fair here: changing language is not automatically dishonest. Sometimes new words are more accurate. Sometimes language changes because we understand something better.

But sometimes?

Sometimes I think we change the word because the old word makes us uncomfortable.

And Scripture gives an incredibly blunt warning about this:

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” — Isaiah 5:20

That verse is terrifying when you really think about it.

It doesn’t simply warn about people doing evil.

It warns about getting to the point where evil is being called good.

Merciful.

Compassionate.

Necessary.

Progressive.

Helpful.

Maybe even loving.

And this is where human psychology becomes frightening to me.

Most people do not wake up in the morning thinking, I’m going to become the villain today.

We explain ourselves.

We say we had no choice.

We say it was for someone’s own good.

We say everybody does it.

We say the alternative would have been cruel.

Sometimes those explanations are true.

Sometimes they are the stories we tell ourselves because the actual truth is harder to live with.

That is one of the things I keep returning to when I write characters.

The most frightening person is not always someone who knows he is doing evil.

Sometimes it is someone doing something terrible while sincerely believing he is compassionate.

And Christianity does not let me point that observation only at everyone else.

I have to ask it about myself too.

Where do I rename my own sins?

Where do I call pride “conviction”?

Where do I call cowardice “keeping the peace”?

Where do I call selfishness “wisdom”?

Where do I find a better word for something because repentance would hurt?

If truth only exists for me to use against people I disagree with, then I am not really interested in truth.

I am interested in winning.

Truth has to be allowed to expose me too.

This is bigger than Left versus Right

I know exactly how a post like this gets categorized.

Conservative.

Pro-life.

Christian.

Right wing.

Someone else will respond with the opposite political labels, and suddenly everybody knows which team everybody belongs to and nobody has to think anymore.

But I’m trying to get underneath that.

Before there was a Republican Party or a Democratic Party, there was a question:

What do I owe another human being?

What do I owe someone who is weaker than me?

What do I owe someone who depends completely on somebody else?

What do I owe someone who is inconvenient?

Unwanted?

Sick?

Disabled?

Unable to defend himself?

Does that person's value change when protecting him becomes costly?

I believe Christianity gives me a very clear answer.

No.

And that answer does not depend on whether Massachusetts agrees with me.

It does not depend on whether the majority agrees with me.

It does not depend on whether saying it becomes unpopular.

God did not lose control because Massachusetts changed a law

And this matters too, because I do not want to write like I think God is somewhere in heaven panicking because another legislature passed something wicked.

Christ is Lord.

Period.

He was Lord before this law.

He is Lord after it.

If my confidence in Christianity disappeared every time the government contradicted Christianity, then government would have been my real authority all along.

Truth does not become false because enough people vote against it.

Human dignity does not disappear because a legal system stops recognizing it.

God does not surrender His authority because human beings decide that something else would be more convenient.

So I do not think Christians should respond with panic.

But I also do not think trusting God means becoming passive.

Sometimes trusting God is exactly what allows you to say something is wrong without being terrified of what people will think of you.

Speak for people who cannot speak for themselves.

Tell the truth without hatred.

Show mercy without pretending evil is good.

Call sinners—including ourselves—to repentance.

Remember that nobody is beyond the grace of Jesus Christ.

And refuse to let a culture convince us that compassion requires lying about what is actually happening.

Massachusetts changed its law.

The child did not change.

And neither did God. 

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 Sources:

1. The enacted law itself — Chapter 188, Acts of 2026

 This is the most important source. It contains the exact language replacing the old post-24-week framework. 

https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2026/Chapter188 

2. H.5595 bill page

 This shows the legislative history and that it became Chapter 188 after being signed by the governor. 

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5595 

3. Massachusetts House explanation of the bill

 Useful because it gives the supporters’ argument in their own words: they believed the four existing categories were too restrictive for complex medical circumstances. 

https://malegislature.gov/PressRoom/Detail?pressReleaseId=1450 

4. Massachusetts Legislature statement after passage

Includes statements from lawmakers and the Massachusetts Medical Society explaining why they supported physician discretion. 

https://malegislature.gov/PressRoom/Detail?pressReleaseId=1475 

5. NIH/NICHD fetal-development overview

 Useful if you want a non-political medical source when discussing development at 24 weeks. The NIH notes that by 24 weeks fingerprints and footprints have formed and the fetus has regular sleep/wake patterns. 

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/factsheets/pregnancy