When the Alabama Supreme Court announced its decision that embryos have the same legal rights as children — placing IVF access in jeopardy nationwide — the future of LGBTQ+ families instantly became uncertain. LGBTQ+ couples overwhelmingly rely on fertility treatments to build their families, and IVF is the most common method of assisted reproduction.
LGBTQ+ people have long endured obstacles when it comes to family building — from exorbitant costs to bureaucratic roadblocks to discrimination and bias — but the GOP’s outright hostility toward LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights has fostered increasingly nasty attitudes toward queer families.
But queer people are resilient, and in the face of all this hate, out Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) has a clear answer for how to maintain pride in our families and avoid letting extremists bring us down: “Vote them out of office, and vote people who will stand with us and protect us into office.”
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“I meet so many people who are using surrogacy and IVF and assisted reproduction because of the rights and freedoms they’re afforded under Massachusetts law,” Healey told LGBTQ Nation. “I’m proud of who I am and what I get to do every day and the freedoms that I get to stand up for and the policies we get to advance, and people should take pride in that and not let the bullies and the haters defeat our spirit.”
Healey’s administration is the antithesis of hostility.
In the year and a half since she shattered the lavender ceiling and was sworn in as one of the country’s first out lesbian governors, Healey has signed a landmark parentage act to protect LGBTQ+ families, introduced and signed legislation to guarantee IVF coverage for LGBTQ+ veterans, signed a critical maternal health bill, passed an executive order to protect access to emergency abortion care, and expanded state spending benchmarks to support LGBTQ+-owned businesses.
The governor has also hit the campaign trail hard for Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, participating in Zoom rallies, and campaigning with other governors.
“People who believe in and want to protect civil rights and freedoms need to go vote,” she said, “and they need to go vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
Healey praised Harris and Gov. Tim Walz as “champions of women and the freedom that women should have to make decisions for themselves.” They are also “champions for the LGBTQ community,” she added, highlighting Harris’ longstanding commitment to LGBTQ+ rights.
“People who believe in and want to protect civil rights and freedoms need to go vote.”
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey
Healey and Harris had overlapping terms as attorneys general for their respective states. While Healey was suing then-President Donald Trump’s administration nearly 100 times, she said Harris was equally busy fighting for LGBTQ+ people.
She praised Harris for establishing a hate crimes unit to investigate anti-LGBTQ+ violence, as well as for her advocacy in helping end the gay and trans panic defense in California.
“She famously refused to defend Prop 8 [which sought to outlaw same-sex marriage in the state],” Healey added, “and later, [became known for] her advocacy as senator, co-sponsoring the Equality Act, defending the ACA [the Affordable Care Act], and [then as vice president] helping Joe Biden with probably the most pro-equality administration in history.”
The governor didn’t hesitate when asked what most worries her about a second term for Donald Trump when it comes to bodily autonomy and the rights of families: “Everything.”
“It’s really, really scary … I mean, [Trump] probably led the most anti-LGBTQ administration in American history, and taking away freedoms and protections, you know, banning transgender people from serving in the military, arguing in courts that businesses should be allowed to refuse to serve LGBTQ people, taking away medically necessary care for young people, and we know based on Project 2025 and his own statements, it will be so much worse … They want to go after marriage equality. They want to implement a national abortion ban. They want to restrict contraception.”
She expressed deep concern about the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth as lawmakers across the nation propose hundreds of bills trying to roll back their rights, and in some cases, eliminate their right to exist at all.
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According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers, and in the organization’s 2024 national mental health survey, 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being has been negatively impacted by recent politics.
“Rates of suicide are up,” Healey said. “Add to that, since Trump overturned Roe — and I mean that, Trump did overturn Roe… he made good on that — now we have one in three women in America living in a state with an abortion ban. So, these are the things that are very real and under threat.”
The Trump campaign has continuously tried to distance itself from the dystopian vision painted by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which offers a chilling blueprint for what a second Trump term might look like. But Trump has many connections to the project, and as Healey has told the press, “Don’t believe anything that Donald Trump says” because he’ll “say anything and everything depending on where the wind is blowing.”
But there is one thing Healey absolutely trusts Trump to do, and that’s carry out his party’s threats to the American people. Just like he overturned Roe v. Wade, Healey warns he is more than capable of achieving the goals laid out in Project 2025, which essentially calls to completely eliminate LGBTQ+ rights and literally states, “Only heterosexual, two-parent families are safe for children.”
“These things he’s going to make good on,” warned Healey, who herself is the stepmother to two children. “It’s very dangerous right now.”
Trump and Project 2025 would undoubtedly upend the lives of LGBTQ+ families, but there are also economic reasons the policies would be catastrophic.
“Part of the reason is we’re a state that has long protected civil rights and freedoms … I think it’s a critical piece of our economic competitiveness … We want colleges and universities and our businesses to have the opportunity to attract the very best talent to Massachusetts.”
“And we want people to come and succeed and thrive here and grow families here and grow businesses here, grow careers here. And one of the ways we do that successfully is being a state that not just through government policy, but also through the actions of our businesses and corporate stakeholders has been a state about respecting and supporting civil rights and freedoms.”
Healey recalled her time as the attorney general’s office’s civil rights chief when she successfully challenged the Defense of Marriage Act and helped lay the groundwork for nationwide marriage equality.
“One of the briefs that we put together for the first circuit and then later for the first court was an amicus brief signed by businesses in support of equality,” she explained, “and a reason they did that was because they understood the economic imperative. Companies do better when there’s more representation on their boards and in their C suites. That’s been proven. You’re going to get better policies, better ideas, better results and outcomes when you promote an inclusive and open environment.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey speaks on stage during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 22, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.
She touted her state’s diverse elected officials as a driving force behind the progress they’ve made to protect the rights of marginalized communities. Healey is not only the nation’s first out lesbian governor, along with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D), but she and Kim Driscoll also make up the country’s first all-woman governor/lieutenant governor team.
“I know that we’ll get better policies and outcomes, most importantly, for people when we have more representation,” she said.
But Healey is quick to share the credit, emphasizing that increased government representation is only part of the story.
“We owe so much to families and advocates who’ve come forward and told their stories over the years,” she said, “members of the community with lived experience who’ve told their stories, who’ve gone to the state legislature, who’ve testified in hearings, who’ve talked to the media. They deserve the real credit here.”
She added that LGBTQ+ families must continue to “speak out and speak up against the lies” and the “vile misinformation that’s out there, which is something both Trump and Vance spew regularly.”
“I mean, if you look at the arc of history in this realm, look at the progress that has been made for our community. Let’s build on that. Let’s draw upon that in what is, I’ll acknowledge, a really challenging time, but people need to hang together and vote for equality leaders like Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
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