Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey’s office announced on Aug. 10 that she had “signed legislation strengthening abortion protections in Massachusetts, ensuring that patients experiencing serious pregnancy complications can receive medically appropriate care from their medical providers they know and trust here in Massachusetts.
“Today’s action comes as reproductive rights continue to face unprecedented attacks across the country following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade,” the statement continued. “While President Trump and state legislatures continue to push abortion bans, Massachusetts has strengthened protections for patients and providers and expanded access to reproductive healthcare. This legislation builds on those efforts by ensuring patients can continue to receive compassionate, medically appropriate care in Massachusetts during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.”
A day later, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a rule that “ends the use of federal Medicaid and CHIP funds” for “sex-rejecting” procedures on minors.
“Today, we are ending federal taxpayer funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said. “These interventions carry serious risks and can cause irreversible harm. The federal government will no longer use Medicaid and CHIP dollars to fund procedures that fail to meet the evidentiary standard our children deserve.”
“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “By cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we’re following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish.”
The governor’s office immediately announced that it intends to make up for the lost funds if and when the rule takes effect, Boston’s WBUR radio reported.
“The Healey-Driscoll administration is committed to ensuring all Massachusetts residents have access to the [so-called] lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare they need and deserve,” Healey’s spokesman said. “We will work with our healthcare partners across the state so that they can continue to offer this critically important care in the face of federal assaults.”
Bay State Catholics responded forcefully. The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts reported that Gov. Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll were joined by “their friends from the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund, Reproductive Equity Now, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Maura Healey has other friends, however, which some pro-life Catholics — like the ones now calling for her excommunication — might not be aware of,” the League reports. The “other friends” are included in a series of revealing photos of Healey’s public appearances:
“Here is Maura being welcomed by Seán Patrick [Cardinal] O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap., at the Catholic Charities Spring Celebration in Boston in May of 2024. . . . Here is Maura with Pope Francis, in the Vatican, again in May of 2024. . . . Here is Maura discussing reproductive rights with students at St. John’s Prep in Danvers. . . . Here is Maura with students from Cathedral High School in Boston. . . .”
The League perseveres: “Some might ask, understandably, how persons and organizations with diametrically opposite principles could both be friends with Maura Healey.
“The answer is simple. They want different things from Maura.
“Planned Parenthood, for instance, wants legislation expanding abortion in Massachusetts, and Maura obliges them.
“The Catholic hierarchy, on the other hand, wants money: state social service funds for Catholic Charities; state housing funds for the Archdiocesan Planning Office for Urban Affairs; and, of course, major donor contributions for the Catholic Schools Foundation, which is always helped when the governor is sitting at the head table at their annual fundraiser.
“As with Planned Parenthood, Maura obliged.
“In 2023, her first year as governor, she gave $1 million to Catholic Charities of Boston.
“In 2024, she gave $2.6 million to Catholic Charities, split between the Archdiocese of Boston and the Diocese of Springfield.
“That same year, she followed up with another half million to Catholic Charities Boston, and then gave the archdiocese a substantial $13.9 million in housing money for the River Street Village Project in Mattapan.
“In 2025, Maura gave nearly $600,000 to Catholic parishes and schools to combat hate crimes, another $450,000 to archdiocesan Hispanic agencies, and nearly $1 million to Catholic Charities of Boston and the Notre Dame Center of Lawrence.
“In 2026, Maura gave nearly a quarter of a million to Catholic Charities of Fall River, and yet another half million dollars to Boston.
“For the Catholic hierarchy, it is nice to have friends like Maura Healey.
“Without trying to exculpate Maura Healey, perhaps the outrage of offended Catholics ought to be directed at the Catholic prelates and Catholic institutions which enabled her, affirmed her, honored her, and supplicated her over the last 12 years.
“Maura Healey is not the problem. She is just the symptom. The problem is the Catholic Church in Massachusetts,” the report concludes.
Since Aristotle, the study of ethics has focused on habits — indeed, in English we translate the Greek term ethike as “habits” or “customs.”
It is useful to offer students a visual demonstration of the power of habits early in their study of ethics. Offer them a four-by-four-inch board of some 12 inches in length. Give them a hammer and a nail, then ask them to pound it into the board a couple of times.
Now, pull the nail out — not with the hammer, but with your fingers.
After one hit or perhaps two, that will work. But eventually, it won’t.
After an individual pounds in a bad habit over a length of time, it is virtually impossible to break.
And what about good habits?
The opposite is true. They are quite difficult to acquire. But alas, they are very easy to break.
In recent years, our shepherds have unfortunately acquired some bad habits. Yes, they were easy, alas, and attractive. They needed taxpayer money. They needed support from pro-abortion politicians. They needed approval from the secular media.
So they lowered their standards, or simply ignored them.
On reflection, they failed to acknowledge another fundamental ethical rule — the distinction between “needs” and “desires.”
Do they really need the taxpayer funding, the public acclaim, or the complicity of the pro-abortion pols?
Can they break the bad habits?
