"The two women were grateful that the Texas abortion statute, enacted in 1859, was what reformers referred to as an “old-style” law, compared with the “new-style” reform laws that had been written in the late 1960s. The Texas law was unusually restrictive and permitted abortion only to save the mother’s life, not even in cases of incest or rape. In contrast, the new reform legislation typically added therapeutic exceptions-to preserve the mother’s physical or mental health, to prevent serious fetal deformity, and to terminate pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. In theory these new laws were supposed to make abortion more widely available. In practice they made it less accessible since complicated administrative procedures, such as residency, age, and consent requirements, hindered the abortion process, especially for women who did not know how to cut through red tape. The constitutionality of some of the so-called reform laws was already being challenged in courts, at considerable time and expense. With an old law, a court challenge could be straightforward and uncomplicated, or so the two women hoped. They would not have to spend a lot of time and money amassing statistical evidence that the laws were being administered in a discriminatory fashion, nor would they have to pay expert witnesses to attest to the fact that consent or age requirements denied women access to abortion. Instead, they could base their challenge on a single, straightforward issue, the idea that the Texas abortion law was unconstitutional."