With the midterm elections coming up later this year, many hot-button issues are being brought back to the forefront of political discourse. One of these issues emerging once again in the public eye is the debate on abortion. The right for a woman to choose what to do with her body is in great jeopardy in North Carolina, with an anti-abortion state legislature being backed by the equally anti-abortion Trump administration.

Advocates for abortion rights must retaliate against this wave of anti-abortion fervor to keep the right to choice within the hands of women. When considering that as of 2014, 60 percent of abortion patients were in their 20’s, it becomes all the more clear that this issue concerns college-aged students more heavily than other age demographics.

The right to abortion has been quietly assailed in the last few years within the South. These recent developments come as an additional blow to the already poor state the clinics have been in relative to other parts of the United States. For instance, North Carolina had only 16 clinics in 2014, one-sixth as many as New York, despite having half of New York’s population that year.

The issue has already been brought to the center of dialogue in the hotly contested congressional primary race between Republicans Mark Harris and the incumbent, Robert Pittenger, in North Carolina’s 9th district. The winner of the race, Harris, has been a staunch critic of Pittenger’s pro-life accomplishments. Mark Harris has not been shy in showing his contempt for the legality of abortion and the Supreme Court decision that started it all, Roe v. Wade. Harris has said he believes that abortion should be an issue that is left up to the decision of individual states.

At the state legislature level, Republicans have been just as steady in their efforts to stifle abortion rights. One of the leading factors contributing to the lower amount of abortions performed has been the waiting period policy implemented within the state. This policy forces women seeking abortions to wait 72 hours to get their abortion after consulting with a doctor.

North Carolina saw one of the greatest declines in the number of abortions performed in the state over the course of the five-year period from 2010 to 2015. In this time, the number of abortions dropped by about 26 percent, with Hawaii being the only surveyed state with a sharper decline.

North Carolina is not the only state where state legislatures are pushing the limits of the Roe v. Wade decision. Roe v. Wade declared that states can regulate but not prohibit abortions before the third trimester, which doctors typically note to be around 24 weeks. States like Mississippi and Iowa have produced laws that show blatant disregard for this stipulation. In Mississippi, the state government passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks, and the governor of Iowa signed a bill in April that would ban abortions after doctors can detect a fetal heartbeat which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

On the national level, the battle for reproductive rights is just as gloomy. The Trump administration has helped state governments to strip Medicaid coverage of Planned Parenthood’s services by rescinding an Obama-era interpretation of the law. This would stop many of the nation’s low-income patients from receiving help from Planned Parenthood due to their insurance coverage not including it.

Advocates for a woman’s right to choose must show up at the polls in November to rebuke this latest assault on abortion. Public demonstrations like the now-annual Women’s March are excellent steps to reclaiming reproductive rights. The march shows legislators that there is a strong backing of constituents who would like to keep reproductive rights in the hands of women and not the government.

Mark Harris is up for election in North Carolina this fall, as are all 13 of North Carolina’s representatives. If advocates come out in the midterm elections with the same amount of tenacity as they had for the Women’s March, then we will see the right to choose become an inalienable right, as it is meant to be.