Massachusetts is facing fierce criticism over a new law expanding abortion rights up to birth, with neonatologist Dr. Robin Pierucci warning that serious decisions could be made using limited prenatal information. Pierucci called the situation “very disturbing” during an interview with Fox News Digital.

Pierucci is a cochair of the American College of Pediatricians' Pro Life Council and cares for newborns with serious health complications. She said she could not “reconcile” the newly signed measure, which is named the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act.

Gov. Maura Healey signed the bill last week, eliminating Massachusetts' previous 24 week gestational limit on abortion. The law, scheduled to take effect in less than 90 days, makes Massachusetts the 10th state to permit the procedure up to birth.

Under the law, terminations may be performed based on a physician's professional judgment. Pierucci argued that doctors retain an absolute “obligation to care” even when a baby's condition cannot be cured.

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Pierucci said health care should focus on protecting both the mother and the baby while removing barriers to helping a baby live well after a problem is identified. “Voting one off the island because there was a suspected diagnosis is just inconsistent to do no harm.”

Among her concerns are potentially inaccurate prenatal screening results that could lead parents to consider abortion. She also pointed to medical technology used to help babies born as early as 22 weeks and the ethical dilemmas that the law could create for medical professionals.

Pierucci said parents are increasingly offered pregnancy termination after prenatal screening tests that may produce misleading or inaccurate results. She warned that an image often cannot show how severely or mildly a patient will be affected.

“There's something called the spectrum of disease, meaning I can't tell usually from just a picture how much or how little the patient's going to be affected,” Pierucci said. “This thing is going on frequently. It's very disturbing that we're making life and death decisions with so little information.”

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According to Pierucci, screening tests have become routine but generally provide percentage based probabilities rather than complete diagnostic certainty. She said parents could therefore make irreversible decisions without fully understanding what a result indicates or how severely their child could be affected.

Pierucci routinely cares for extremely premature babies born at the edge of viability, typically between 22 and 24 weeks. She said the law creates an ethical contradiction for physicians working to save premature babies delivered during that same period.

A baby at 24 weeks of gestation is just over halfway through a full term pregnancy. The baby is roughly the size of a hand and would have fingernails, eyelashes and rapidly developing brain activity, marking a significant milestone in fetal viability.

For babies diagnosed with severe or fatal conditions, Pierucci supports perinatal palliative care. That approach surrounds families with medical and emotional support while focusing on keeping an infant comfortable for whatever time the baby has.

Pierucci described perinatal palliative care as compassionate and active clinical care, rejecting the position that medical treatment is useful only when it can provide a complete cure. “Even if we don't have the ability to fully heal something... I always have an obligation to care,” she said.

Because the law does not account for alternative approaches, Pierucci said practitioners who conscientiously object to abortion could face ethical conflicts. “When we have laws that fail to meet an ethical standard, we risk moral trauma to those who have a conscientious objection to this. This is not consistent with their value system.”

Pierucci said she opposes abortion at every gestational age because she does not believe the value of a baby's life changes as a pregnancy progresses. “I don't give it different value at different points in gestation,” she said.

She also rejected the idea that an abortion earlier in pregnancy makes a mother's pain less severe. “It just meant her baby was dead sooner, which is heartbreaking to hear.”

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