Recently, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has enacted a strict abortion law requiring abortion clinics to meet the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers and have a doctor with admitting privileges at least 30 miles from the abortion clinic, abortions can only be done before the woman is twenty weeks pregnant, and lastly all clinics must be licensed as ambulatory surgery centers.  While two of these restrictions has met general acceptance, the restrictions requiring a doctor with admitting privileges at a near hospital and meeting the standards of hospital style surgery centers has been deemed unconstitutional.  This restriction will cause several abortion clinics to shut down because of the cost of renovations.  In fact, out of the 42 abortion clinics in Texas, only five currently meet these standards. 

                Senator Cruz is appealing the removal of these restrictions and has claimed he will take it all the way to the Supreme Court.  In an article in the Huffington Post, Senator Cruz made a statement saying “Texas passed commonsense legislation to protect the health of women and their unborn children.  This law is constitutional and consistent with U.S. Supreme Court precedent protecting the life and health of the mother and child.  I hope the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will uphold Texas’ reasonable law.”  While Senator Cruz claims to be working to protect the health of women, pro-choice activists are offering information and data that these measures are unnecessary.  Activists such as Terri Burke, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, have produced evidence that this will actually make it harder for women to find a safe place to get an abortion, creating more back alley abortions and bigger families living below the poverty line.  She says that because of these new laws, “thirty five percent of the population without access to abortion care and those are rural and, often, poor women.”

                Senator Ted Cruz has said over and over that he wants to make abortions illegal and he has now passed this legislature under the mask of “protecting women’s health” while in truth it is one step closer to ridding women of the ability to making their own choices when it comes to their bodies.  Whether or not you agree with the decision a person makes whether it be their religion, career, life choices, or health choices, no one has the right to take that ability to make those decisions away.