Louisiana, with nearly one million women of reproductive age, now has only three abortion clinics. A woman who chooses to have an abortion — as about a quarter of American women do — must make her way to one of those facilities, where she will be legally required to sit through counseling intended to discourage her from having the procedure as well as an ultrasound that must be shown and described in detail to her. She then must wait at least 24 hours before returning to the clinic for the procedure. If she is a Medicaid patient, her bill will most likely be hundreds of dollars paid out of pocket.

As daunting as these hurdles are, the outcome of a soon-to-be-heard Supreme Court case out of Louisiana could erect even more, and not just for the women in that state. The right to have an abortion, which exists in name only in some areas of the country, could soon be even further whittled away — and the justices could do so without overturning Roe v. Wade. The case’s outcome could also upend how reproductive rights cases are litigated, making it harder to fight other anti-abortion laws in the future.

The case, June Medical Services v. Russo, which will be heard by the Supreme Court on Wednesday, centers on a Louisiana law that’s expected to force the closing of all but one of the state’s abortion clinics. The law requires that abortion providers jump through the medically unnecessary — and, for some, impossible — hoop of securing admitting privileges at a hospital near their clinic.

More than 450 similarly burdensome laws — known as TRAP, or targeted regulation of abortion providers — have passed in states nationwide over the past decade, closing scores of clinics in the name of protecting women’s safety. It’s a confounding rationale — people are generally made safer with more access to health care, not less. And abortion in particular is one of the safest medical procedures there is. Patients are more likely to land in the hospital after having their wisdom teeth removed than they are after an abortion, and they’re 14 times more likely to die during childbirth.