September 17, 2025

Signature collection underway to stop taxpayer funded abortions in Massachusetts

REGIONAL
Story and photo by Carolee McGrath

A training session was held on how to correctly collect signatures for a petition drive aimed at defunding abortion in Massachusetts.

WESTFIELD – The Massachusetts Alliance to Stop Taxpayer Funded Abortion held a training session, Thursday, Sept. 11 at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Parish in Westfield, to instruct volunteers on how to collect signatures for an initiative petition in attempt to remove abortion as a constitutional right. Close to 75,000 signatures are needed in the first step of the process to move the issue to a ballot question in 2028, amending the Massachusetts Constitution. In 1981, the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts ruled that Massachusetts taxpayers should pay for abortions. The signatures will be collected through Nov. 19.

Thomas Harvey, the chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance to Stop Taxpayer Funded Abortions and attorney, said signatures can be disqualified for a myriad of reasons.

“If there is a stain on the sheet they throw it out,” he explained to the 30 people gathered at the training session. “If a photo copy comes out sideways, the sheet is no good.”

Harvey said because of the large number of signatures disqualified by the Secretary of State’s Office, he is hoping to collect at least 100,000 signatures.

“I think that the status quo is just not acceptable with the number of abortions being publicly funded. I think stirring the pot is just getting people activated on the issue if you don’t talk about it nothing is going to change,” he said.

Harvey explained that this effort is separate from the bill recently passed by the U.S. Congress to defund Planned Parenthood. Because taxpayer funded abortion is considered a constitutional right in Massachusetts, abortions will continue to be paid for with public funds, regardless of any federal decisions.

Harvey said last year, Massachusetts taxpayers paid $6 million to cover abortions.

“This proposed constitutional amendment has the potential to eventually strike a harmful blow to the abortion industry in Massachusetts. Over the past approximately 40 years, Planned Parenthood and its ilk have not considered the Massachusetts pro-life movement to be a serious threat to business as usual. But the taxpayer funding issue is their vulnerability. So, in my view, that is one of the areas where pro-life efforts should be concentrated,” Harvey wrote.

In 2021, a petition which would have mandated medical care to an infant who survived abortion, failed to advance due to falling short of the 75,000 signatures required.

For more information, go to stoptaxpayerabortion.org