Massachusetts scraps old abortion law

BOSTON — Massachusetts on Friday became the first state since President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court to abolish from its books an abortion ban that predates the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican who supports abortion rights, signed a bill Friday that repeals the unenforced ban with roots dating to 1845, along with other archaic statutes that prohibited unmarried women from using contraceptives, and made adultery and fornication criminal offenses.

Baker called the laws “antiquated, inappropriate,” and in some cases, harmful.

“Here in Massachusetts, we will not compromise on a woman’s right to her own decisions,” he said.

Abortion rights proponents fear that Kavanaugh, whose nomination to replace Anthony Kennedy on the high court is pending before the U.S. Senate, could tilt the court toward undoing abortion protections in place since Roe v. Wade, thereby potentially triggering old state laws that haven’t been enforced in decades.

Seventeen states already have laws that could be used to restrict the legal status of abortions if the Roe decision is overturned or severely limited. Of those, Massachusetts was among 10 states that still had pre-Roe abortion bans on the books, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national research group that supports abortion rights.