evidence: Merriam-Webster defines "essential" as meaning "of the utmost importance: basic, indispensable, necessary." The primary determinant of whether abortion meets this threshold is whether or not it is medically required. And the simple fact, as the Catholic Medical Association notes on its website, is that direct abortion, undertaken for the specific purpose of ending the unborn child’s life, is never medically necessary. It can be the case that an unborn baby’s life may be lost as a result of a medical procedure undertaken in order to save the life of the mother, but that’s a very rare circumstance and one that’s very different from an elective abortion. Consequently, the U.S. states that have specified that abortion can’t be designated as essential, like Texas, have qualified their bans with language allowing for medical procedures that really are necessary. [...] In truth, abortion-rights activists’ own rhetoric, which constantly casts abortion as a woman’s sacrosanct personal "choice," further undermines any claim of it being medically essential.