An innocent woman was raped. In an effort to prevent this traumatic event from defining her life, she turned to abortion, but her doctor was not allowed to perform the  procedure because of the restrictions placed on the hospital in which she worked. The woman resorted to buying unprescribed abortion medication from an illegal website. Once she took the medication without supervision, she ended up in the ER because of continual bleeding. This is simply inhumane. Is it really the right of the government to determine what we should do with our own bodies when they’re not the ones that will have to suffer the consequences?

Laws against abortion have been made to prevent women from terminating their pregnancies under many conditions. One of the major cases occurred in 1972, when a woman named Jane Roe sued the state of Texas for its restrictions. The state had a law that prohibited abortion unless the mother’s life was in danger. However, as Jane’s life wasn’t in danger when she wanted to terminate she felt trapped by this legislation. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and ruled in her favor.

This one case set the rhythm for many improvements in the system concerning the issue of abortion. Women could terminate without state regulation in the first trimester, regulations could only be placed during the second trimester and laws could only be made if they were meant to protect the fetus in the third trimester. This was a major step in progress for women’s rights in a society where they were deprived of many things, but now many years later, we are starting to take several steps back.

As recently as 2016, Texas had an abortion access law made unconstitutional because it violated legislation. The state law demanded that doctors must have admitting privileges at other hospitals and that clinics need to upgrade to hospital-like standards. These abortion restrictions known as TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) can have a devastating impact on women and force clinics to close completely, with the end goal of making abortion access not just difficult, but impossible. Requiring these admitting privileges gives hospitals veto power over abortion providers. The hospital with which a provider is affiliated with may not be the hospital closest to the patient, therefore, in case of emergencies, some women are forced to travel for long hours since most abortion services are concentrated in the metro. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has stated based on these unnecessary burdens on women that, “When a state severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners... at great risk to their health and safety.” There are already five states (Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming) with only a single clinic that perform abortions. The choices are very limited. We need to make sure that all states are held responsible for keeping abortions safe, legal and accessible.

We must help provide for women and help promote safety for them.

Here is what we NEED to do:

1. Establish more abortion clinics because trap laws have shut them down by the thousands. By increasing the number of clinics we can help provide for women and give them a choice.  
2. Disable Admitting Privileges to help prevent causing consecutive problems and the shutting down of the priorities of clinics.
3. Add a law that enables separate abortion clinic regulations that are fair, and promote safe environments for woman and disable state prevention.

There is a zone of privacy an individual is entitled to, that laws cannot infringe upon and a woman’s right to choose falls into this zone. The choice of an abortion is a fundamental human right. Politicians have constantly made decisions on what women can and cannot do. We as people need to stand for our bodies and represent who we are. If we have the right to bear arms, we should have the right to control what happens to our own bodies.