One of the things that’s important to remember is that for years now, politicians across the country have been working to curtail access to abortion. And so while we face a really troubling future, we’re also really used to fighting this battle. In a lot of ways – in Ohio specifically and all across the country – this isn’t a new fight. It’s just a fight that continues.We are the largest abortion clinic in Ohio and one of the largest abortion clinics in the country. We are a non-profit with a mission of never turning away a patient because of their inability to pay. We try to live up to that mission every day. We serve thousands of women every year. We not only provide the highest quality healthcare to our patients because they deserve it, we also have a mission of training the abortion providers of tomorrow. We train medical students and resident physicians from all of the major hospitals as well as students and residents from around the country who come here for training. The last piece of our mission is that we are a vocal advocate for reproductive health rights and justice in our community. Our community really looks to us as a voice, as someone who will speak up unapologetically for abortion rights, abortion access and the critical role it plays in people’s lives and the health of our community. Every day, we see the power of abortion in helping women maintain control of their bodies and their lives and their futures. We see the thoughtfulness that women bring to this decision. We see the complexities of their lives that they bring to this space and this moment, and we see what it does to their futures. We see how it makes their lives better, and how it makes our communities stronger and healthier.I think there are two parts to that. What happens to women’s access to abortion when clinics close is that in many cases, it forces women to jump through additional hoops. It forces them to wait longer – which is not in their best interest, or in the best interest of their health. It forces them to drive longer distances, to take off more time from work, to get further behind in school. That’s what happens to the women who do manage to access abortion care even as clinics close. But we also know that for some women, the barriers become too great. For some women, closing clinics absolutely curtails access to what should be their legal right. And it’s for all of these women that we really fight every day. We know that the women who will be stopped from getting an abortion are the most marginalised among us. They are low-income women, women of colour, immigrant women, young women without access to resources and incarcerated women. It’s women who have the least who suffer the most under these laws and restrictions as clinics close.The RNC’s platform absolutely was the most regressive, anti-choice platform we have seen in decades. We know that in some ways, this is nothing new, that this is part of a pattern for years now. Politicians have taken really cruel steps to restrict access to abortion from every single angle possible. We have seen restrictions forcing clinics to close, or forcing clinics to maintain standards that no other healthcare provider has to maintain. We have seen restrictions that curtail access to abortion in terms of the number of weeks of pregnancy; rolling back abortion care from 24 weeks of pregnancy to 20. Some states have bans that push abortion care back even further than that. We’ve seen the attempts to push six-week bans, so-called Heartbeat Bills that ban abortion as soon as a foetal heartbeat is detected. We’ve seen mandatory ultrasound laws . We’ve seen laws that require providers to show or talk about the ultrasound to patients even if they don’t want to. We’ve seen waiting periods – which are bad enough at 24 hours – in some states go to 48 or 72 hours . We’ve seen laws restricting access to medication abortions, which is an early and very safe pill version of abortion. Now we are seeing restrictions that would force clinics or patients to go through cremations or burials for their embryos or foetuses rather than going through a typical process of medical waste disposal. People are horrified at these restrictions. There’s clearly no medical basis for any of these. They’re not serving women’s health. They’re not serving the public interest. Their naked goal is to shame and humiliate women and make abortion as difficult and stigmatised as possible.