The Texas clinic shutdown law has no place in the 21st century

This week, I went to the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt — a case that could not be more important to women’s reproductive rights. I left inspired by the thoughtful questions many of the Justices asked and by the thousands of women and men rallying for women’s health, rights, and opportunity.

At its core, this case is about whether our country will continue to uphold women’s constitutional rights or allow extreme, right-wing politicians to sneak around the Constitution and impose harmful policies on women.

If the Supreme Court fails to block the Texas clinic shutdown law in question in this case, extreme politicians across the country will be able to impose requirements on clinics that medical experts, like those from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, say are medically unnecessary — and three-quarters of the clinics providing abortion care in Texas will be forced to close. A dangerous precedent would be set in other states where politicians want to restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.

The Texas clinic shutdown law, and laws like it across the country, have no place in the 21st century. As a mother, grandmother, and United States Senator I believe our country should be one in which a woman, regardless of her zip code or her income, gets to determine her own future. That’s what I’m going to continue fighting for and that is what I am very hopeful the Supreme Court will protect as they rule in this historic case.