Maura Healey Wants to Investigate Parents of Every Newborn Baby

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is pushing to send state-backed health-care workers into the homes of families after every birth in the state so a provider can “make an assessment,” a proposal that would extend a government home-visiting program to Massachusetts’ roughly 68,000 annual births.

But the pro-abortion governor is facing serious questions about whether such a program is government overreach and would lead to investigations or parents the state opposes because of their Christian faith or views.

“Everybody in the state, when you have a baby, you’re going to have a home visit. You’re going to have a home visit within days, weeks, and that will be an opportunity for a healthcare provider to make an assessment and to see if you need some additional support and resources,” Healey said on Boston Public Radio.

The governor announced the plan as part of a postpartum package that includes $2 million to expand the Department of Public Health’s Welcome Family program and $250,000 for the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms.

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Officials say Welcome Family now reaches about 3,000 births a year. The added money, to be sought in a supplemental budget, would give every parent and caregiver “the opportunity to have a home visit.”

State materials describe Welcome Family as a voluntary and free program, but the governor’s comments make it appear that could become mandatory.

A maternal and child health nurse would visit after a birth to check the caregiver and baby, help with feeding and newborn care, screen for mental health concerns and substance use, connect families to health care and social supports, and make referrals that can include domestic violence and food access.

WND, citing the state’s own family handout, reported that the visit also includes discussion of “ensuring that your home is safe.”

Nurses would call back two to three weeks later to see whether the family used the resources.

That official description sits uneasily with Healey’s own words. She did not describe a visit offered only on request. She said everyone who has a baby is “going to have a home visit” so a government-appointed health-care provider can make an assessment.

Critics have called that an unprecedented intrusion of state workers into private family life.

And it could lead to fewer people having children out of fears of government intrusion.

The same governor signed H.5595 on Aug. 10, a measure that legalizes abortion up to birth.

“Governor Healey and the Massachusetts Legislature have erased the final protections for unborn children who can feel pain and who could survive outside the womb,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “At the very stage when premature babies are receiving lifesaving care in neonatal intensive care units, Massachusetts will permit abortionists to end the lives of children of the same age—and even older. That is not compassion, and it is not health care.”

Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said the law is “not about protecting the doctor-patient relationship.”

“It is about abortionists normalizing the deaths of fully developed infants and pressuring vulnerable women to permit their unborn children to die in heinous acts of violence,” she said. “These abortions represent among the most severe human rights abuses permitted in only a few places around the world, including China and North Korea.”

Healey has also defended the state’s removal of a Catholic couple’s daughter for refusing to affirm the fake notion that she could become a boy.

Joseph and Arlene Kutzko have spent nearly two years fighting to regain custody of Sophie, who was 15 when the Department of Children and Families took her in 2024. The parents say Algonquin Regional High School began gender-identity counseling without their knowledge or consent and that their refusal to call her a boy or use male pronouns contributed to her removal.

They say they have not been allowed to see her since January 2025 and Healey claims the child was not removed over the trans issue but because the parents were abusive.

Family attorney Vernadette Broyles said Healey’s account was false and that the charges were deemed unfounded last year.

“It’s very dishonest, because there are no standing charges against them. There is no finding that these parents have committed any abuse against this child in the criminal court, nor is there any supported allegations of abuse or neglect against them, even in the juvenile court,” Broyles said.

Broyles described the Kutzkos as “a very well known, very Catholic, devout family.”

Joseph Kutzko, a scientist, “has science-based objections to the idea of ever telling a child that you can change sex because that’s impossible, as well as faith-based objections to the idea of a child rejecting how God has made her,” she said.

The parents also object to cross-sex hormones because of irreversible harm to a girl’s body.

“The Northborough-Southborough public schools and their counseling practices exposed our daughter to teachings on LGBTQ [ideology] and topics that conflict with our Catholic beliefs about human dignity, creation as male and female in Catholic teaching,” Joseph Kutzko said.

The next hearing is Oct. 29.