Easy access to safe abortion is crucial to reproductive rights, yet clinics are closing at an unprecedented rate in the United States.

Many feel that the government placing restrictions in addition to shutting down clinics is interfering with their right to make decisions about their own bodies and an invasion of their privacy, as a woman’s body belongs to her and she alone and no one should have the right to interfere with it. The majority of the lawmakers being men only furthers this belief.

Many would argue that abortion is wrong and should not be legal except in extreme, life threatening cases. The reasoning is often that life begins at conception, making abortion murder in their opinion. However, most abortions take place in the first trimester, when a fetus is unable to live without the support of the mother and is not considered sentient. Since the fetus can’t survive outside the womb, it shouldn’t be regarded as a separate being.

The only reason an abortion would occur after the first trimester is because of the lack of available abortion clinics.

Pro-life activists are also fond of claiming that abortion hurts women. On the contrary, abortions have actually helped numerous women. “The risk of death from childbirth is 10x higher than the risk of death from having an abortion,” according to Health Research Funding’s “20 Remarkable Pro Choice Abortion Facts and Statistics”.

“I was able to…have an abortion. I knew this decision was the right choice for me. It gave me the same opportunity that middle class men have enjoyed for centuries — to not be tied down in youth, to have time to explore the world, and to decide what my place in that world would be,” Amy Oppenheimer wrote for the Huffington Post. She had her abortion in 1973. Oppenheimer later went on to become a administrative law judge and is now a lawyer at her own law firm.

According to WebMD, some of the most common reasons women get abortions is birth control failure or an inability to support a child. How can someone claim to be pro-life when they believe in sticking a woman with a baby she is unable to take care of?

Religious reasons are often cited in pro-life arguments. However, religious arguments are invalid as forcing one’s beliefs on another using the government violates the first amendment .

Abortion is a personal choice that every woman has the right to make without interference. Closing abortion clinics limits, or takes away, opportunities and choices from women.