In modern society, abortion tends to be a rather taboo topic, and oftentimes it is seen to be a personal decision, whether a women wants to follow through with this procedure. According to Our Body Ourselves, New York became the first state to make abortions legal up until week 24 of a pregnancy. Even though abortion later became legal in all states, this controversial topic continues to be a source of persistent argument (ourbodieourselves.org).

   Currently, the Supreme Court is bringing the topic of abortion back to discussion by hearing a case regarding laws passed by the state of Texas that would increase the criteria for allowing organizations to perform the operation, according to the New York Times (nytimes.com). These new measures passed by the state of Texas are simply loopholes trying to prevent women from exercising their right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

   The new Texas law requires “…doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, while the other requires all abortion clinics in the state to meet the standards for ‘ambulatory surgical centers.’ However, now the justices in the Supreme Court are ruling whether these new laws create an ‘unconstitutional burden’” (nytimes.com).

These new laws are extremely unconstitutional because these laws are preventing women in Texas from having an abortion. These new laws have lead to the closure of about 20 abortions clinics in Texas, which is about half of the clinics. This decrease in abortion clinics makes it hard for women to receive the procedure, which leads to an infringement of their constitutional right to have an abortion (nytimes.com).

    In addition, if women in Texas can’t  receive safe abortions from clinics, they may turn to dangerous alternatives. According to the official Prochoice website, “In the years before Roe v. Wade, the estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million per year. Although accurate records could not be kept, it is known that between the 1880s and 1973, many thousands of women were harmed as a result of illegal abortion” (prochoice.org).

   According to Cosmopolitan Magazine, there has been an increase of people researching self-induced abortion, and this is related to the increase of abortion restrictions.  Furthermore, it is estimated that there are about 1 million abortions held each year, and in 2015, that number dropped to 700,000 (cosmopolitan.com). This can be explained in part by the rise of laws that discourage women from obtaining an abortion. As a society, we cannot regress back to an era when women are forced to seek illegal procedures in order to make a choice that is rightfully theirs.

    Finally, having an abortion is a personal choice. Everyone has a right to his/her beliefs, but everyone also has a right to be in control of his/her body. If someone doesn’t believe that having an abortion is the “right thing” to do, then that person doesn’t have to have one. States such as Texas that are creating these loopholes are just creating situations in which those who are anti-abortion can make them harder to obtain.

   If the Supreme Court deems these new restrictions as constitutional, then other, more conservative states have the right to follow in Texas’s footsteps. This issue was settled many years ago, so let’s not regress back to a time when women did not have full control over their own bodies… not anybody else’s bodies, but their bodies.