Gov. Maura Healey waded into national politics Monday with a rebuke of former President Donald Trump for taking pride in having contributed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and saying abortion rights should be up to individual states. And a new poll shows that most Massachusetts residents may agree with the governor.
Trump, who is on track for the Republican nomination for president, said Monday that he is “proudly the person responsible for the ending” of Roe v. Wade, the overturned Supreme Court ruling that protected abortion rights nationally. And he declared that abortion rights is an issue that “the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state.”
Healey, who made a national name for herself as attorney general for going after the Trump administration on a number of fronts, released a statement through the governor’s office about two hours later Monday morning. She said Trump’s position shows that “he is supporting horrific abortion bans across the country that deny women access to basic health care and freedom.”
“In Massachusetts, we are still seeing the impact of Donald Trump’s actions. More women than ever are coming to our state for reproductive care, straining providers and threatening access to essential health care,” Healey said in the statement. “Massachusetts is a beacon of reproductive freedom, and I will work every day to make sure abortion remains safe and legal. But one thing is clear – Donald Trump is a threat to the rights and health care of women in Massachusetts and across the country.”
A CommonWealth Beacon/GBH News poll released Monday found 67 percent of Massachusetts residents feel that the Supreme Court striking down the federal right to abortion was the wrong decision. The poll conducted late last month by the MassINC Polling Group found that 19 percent said it was the right decision and 14 percent said they did not know or refused to answer.
A majority of those polled, 51 percent, said they personally know someone who has had an abortion.
While Democrats hope to make political hay this year by contrasting their positions on abortion to those of Trump and other Republicans, the poll showed the topic does not rank that highly in terms of what Bay Staters want Beacon Hill to focus on. The top five issues for state government were migrants/immigration (21 percent), housing (15 percent), inflation/cost of living (12 percent), taxes/government spending/welfare (12 percent), and politics – corruption, transparency, incompetence (8 percent).
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