Free Abortion on Demand!

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 844, 18 March 2005.

March 8 is International Women's Day, celebrated by Marxists for decades as a time to honor the struggles of working women throughout the world. As we observed it this year, U.S. troops are continuing the imperialist occupation of Iraq, invading Iraqi families' homes at will and slaughtering Iraqis. At the same time, U.S. imperialist rulers are ever more shrilly shrieking about the "sanctity of human life" at home, oozing concern over the "rights of the unborn" in order to attack women's rights. We therefore observed International Women's Day this year with renewed determination to continue the struggle for women's liberation.

Today, the legal right to abortion dangles by a thread. Simple access to abortion has long been nearly impossible for poor, particularly black and Latino, women. Some 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion clinics, which are now outnumbered by "crisis pregnancy centers"—fake clinics set up by anti-abortion groups whose purpose is to subject pregnant women to anti-abortion propaganda and otherwise pressure them to carry the fetus to term.

Abortion is a politically explosive issue because it raises the question of women's equality. This simple and safe medical procedure provides women with some control over whether or not to have children. For this reason, it is viewed as a threat to the institution of the family, a crucial prop for the system of capitalist exploitation.

The attacks on abortion rights are part of a campaign of social reaction aimed at regimenting and intimidating the entire population—not only women, but black people, immigrants, gays and the working class as a whole. While the bigots in the Justice Department confer "civil rights" to fetuses and call themselves "pro-life," they relish the legal lynching of black men—the racist death penalty. The ruling class takes little notice of the AIDS epidemic as it ravages black ghettos, preaches abstinence to teenagers deprived of condoms and sex education, and keeps the safe and effective RU 486 "abortion pill" (as well as "emergency contraception" and, increasingly, birth control) out of reach.

Abortion and contraception should be available on demand as part of free, universal, quality health care. In order to effectively fight to defend and extend abortion rights, activists must not look to Democratic politicians. The Democratic Party is the other party of American capitalism, which occasionally quibbles with, but more generally reinforces, the Republicans in carrying out capitalist rule. The role of both parties—as well as the courts—is to serve the interests of the wealthy, exploiting class. This will be achieved at the expense of those who are exploited and oppressed—working people, blacks, immigrants, women and gays. The reason there has been little to no protest against the increasing assaults on abortion rights is that throughout the 1990s, bourgeois feminist organizations demobilized protest, preaching reliance on the "pro-choice" Clinton administration, while looking to the courts and appealing to Congress.

What is needed is to fight to defend and extend women's rights, including the right to abortion, through the independent mass mobilization of the oppressed backed by the social power of labor. The struggle for women's liberation is integral to the fight for socialist revolution.

It is essential to forge a multiracial revolutionary workers party to lead the working class in a socialist revolution that sweeps away this system of capitalist exploitation and racial and sexual oppression. For free abortion on demand! Break with the Democrats—For a workers party that fights for socialist revolution!

Democrats' and Republicans' "Family Values" Target Women

Ever since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling struck down anti-abortion laws, anti-abortion forces have sought to eliminate the right to this essential medical procedure. With the re-election of George W. Bush the anti-abortion forces have gone from chipping away to a full-scale assault. Fifteen states have laws that would outlaw abortion throughout pregnancy (with two making no exceptions for health or rape); twenty-seven states outlaw abortion as early as 12 weeks with no exceptions for health; other states have been repeatedly considering such measures. While all these state laws are currently deemed by the federal courts to be unconstitutional and are therefore symbolic, they offer an ominous glimpse at the possible future and are a barometer of the times.

Other laws go far beyond symbolism and are genuinely eroding the legal right to abortion. Thirty-one states have passed laws against a seldom used but occasionally medically necessary second- or third-term abortion procedure known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction, disgustingly dubbed "partial-birth abortion" by anti-abortion demagogues. The banning of this rare procedure has been used to go after abortion rights more generally. In the state of Kansas, anti-abortion attorney general Phill Kline has issued subpoenas demanding the complete medical records of scores of women and teenage girls who have had abortions after 22 weeks, at which point Kansas law restricts abortion access.

This breathtaking assault on privacy is being justified with the transparently lying claim that it is necessary to "fight child abuse": since the age of consent for a girl in Kansas to have sex is 16, a girl under that age who has an abortion is deemed to have been "raped." In fact, teenagers have consensual sex, whether the anti-sex police like it or not, and largely due to the ignorance about birth control that anti-abortion bigots deliberately foster, teenage girls often get pregnant and are in need of an abortion.

For decades, anti-abortion forces have utilized the puritanical hysteria in this country around issues of young people's sexuality to pass deadly "squeal laws" mandating that girls get their parents' consent before getting an abortion. That "child abuse" is a lying pretext to gun for abortion is revealed by the fact that the attorney general's subpoenas encompass late-term abortion patients of all ages. Criminal reprisals are posed against doctors who provide late-term abortions. Two clinics are the focus of the Kansas subpoenas—serving also to intimidate women from getting abortions. Already, fewer doctors every year agree to be trained in and perform abortions, and such anti-abortion witchhunts can only accelerate that trend.

The sinister events in Kansas have a national precedent. In November 2003, Bush became the first president since Roe to criminalize an abortion procedure by signing the Federal Abortion Ban, which restricts late-term abortions. The ban, which passed Congress with bipartisan support the previous month, is a federal version similar to the one in Kansas. Although three federal courts ruled the federal ban unconstitutional, then Attorney General John Ashcroft took advantage of the opportunity to issue subpoenas—also stopped by a federal court —of the medical records of hundreds of women who had obtained late-term abortions. In pursuing this witchhunt, Ashcroft relied on a clause in the ban inserted by "pro-choice" Democratic lawmakers that the procedure can be performed if deemed "medically necessary" to safeguard the health of the mother. Thanks to the "medically necessary" provision, Ashcroft had a pretext to launch his anti-woman snooping expedition in order to determine whether the procedure was actually "medically necessary."

Break with the Democrats!

Ever since Bush won the November election in large part on the basis of his appeal to religious "moral values," the Democrats have been falling over themselves to prove they're the party Jesus would join. In January, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi created a "Faith Working Group," appointing representative James Clyburn, a preacher's son from South Carolina, to help the Democrats recast their issues in "faith-based terms" with appropriate allusions to the Bible.

Howard Dean, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), in a desperate attempt to shed his image as a patron of supposedly irreligious, latte-drinking, gay-marrying liberal Vermonters, is on a "red, white and blue" tour designed to win over the "red states." In Jackson, Mississippi, Dean prayed for American troops and invoked the Bible, braying to the residents of the former Confederacy, "The South will rise again, and when it does, it will have a D after its name" (Sun Herald, 2 March). Dean is appealing to a particular American heritage here: the Democrats in the South, the Dixiecrats, were the historic party of slavery, the Jim Crow South and the Ku Klux Klan. In his own way, Dean is demonstrating the fact that anti-woman religious reaction and racist bigotry go hand in hand, while women's rights and black rights are entwined.

The Democrats find themselves in a bind. On the one hand, they've historically enjoyed support from black people, as well as women, as the party that, at least for the past few decades, has ostensibly defended civil rights for black people and abortion rights. On the other hand, appealing to religious sentiment necessitates that they rid themselves of unwelcome associations like civil rights and abortion rights. One result is that virtually all the leading Democrats are now ostentatiously welcoming anti-abortion bigots into the party.

Presidential loser John Kerry has called to bring "right-to-life Democrats back to the Democratic Party." Hillary Clinton, in a speech to abortion rights supporters, intoned, "I for one respect those who believe with all their heart and conscience that there are no circumstances under which abortion should be available" and called for opponents and defenders of abortion rights to come together on "common ground" like promoting abstinence. Howard Dean emphasized, "I don't have any objection to someone who is pro-life, if they [are] really dedicated to the welfare of children." Among other Democrats, Dean's former opponent for DNC chair, Timothy Roemer—who ran with the support of "pro-choice" Democrat Nancy Pelosi—has always been against abortion rights. So is Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, a Mormon former police officer who is now the Senate minority leader.

History shows that the advancement in the 1960s and early 1970s of women's rights, including the right to abortion, took place not because it was spontaneously and generously granted by either capitalist party, but due to tremendous social upheavals. The civil rights movement that began in the mid 1950s with the fight against racial inequality, as well as later protests against the Vietnam War, together ushered in a period of extra-parliamentary struggle and social reform that benefited the working class and oppressed in general. It is useful to remember that it was no less a reactionary than Richard Nixon who was compelled in 1970 to sign into law Title X, which funds family planning assistance to poor women. The reform was a product not of the politicians, but of the social struggles of the time. Roe v. Wade three years later similarly reflected these struggles.

With the end of the civil rights movement, and as protests against the Vietnam War disappeared with the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the end of the draft, the pendulum began to swing to the right, and the reforms that had just been won were subject to attack. The first significant assault on abortion took place under the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter, the country's first "born-again Christian" president, who in 1977 sneered, "There are many things in life that are not fair" as he signed into law the Hyde Amendment which eliminated abortion coverage from the Medicaid health plans of 23 million poor women. The Hyde Amendment emboldened the anti-abortion zealots to attack birth control, slashing Title X funds for family planning, and gave renewed steam to the movement to roll back abortion.

The Reagan years and those of Bush Senior were dark ones for defenders of abortion rights, but the subsequent Clinton years offered little respite. Clinton carried out a war on poor and black women which went virtually unopposed by the feminists as long as abortion remained legal and accessible to more privileged, particularly white, women. In 1996 Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which authorized additional state control over the personal and sexual lives of welfare recipients. In language that echoes today's "moral values" climate, the act proclaimed that "marriage is the foundation of a successful society" and enabled states to use their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to promote marriage and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The House version of the act had explicitly racist overtones, citing crime and rising "illegitimacy" rates among blacks. The passage of PRWORA was one episode in Clinton's carrying out his vicious pledge to "end welfare as we know it."

The Democrats and Republicans demonstrate their common interests as parties of capitalist rule through, among other things, upholding the sanctity of the family. The deep-seated oppression of women is rooted in the institution of the family which arose with the advent of private property as a mechanism for passing property from one generation to the next—the monogamous wife ensures the paternity of the heirs. The role of the family is to instill respect for authority and act as a conservatizing force. Together with religion, the family serves to instill a morality that proscribes anything that deviates from the family ideal—from premarital to gay sex. The institution of the family reinforces, as Friedrich Engels put it, "the supremacy of the man over the woman, and the individual family as the economic unit of society" (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884). Thus, the burden of raising the next generation of workers rests on the family. Women's liberation mandates a socialist revolution to end capitalist rule and lay the material basis for the replacement of the family through socializing domestic responsibilities, opening the door not only to legal equality but to social equality.

The War on Abortion Rights

With the ascendancy of "moral values," reactionary ideologues have been gunning for abortion as fast as they can. On 20 November 2004, Congress passed the Federal Refusal Clause, as part of a spending bill, that permits any health provider—health insurers, HMOs, public or private hospitals, clinics, and pharmacists as well as doctors and nurses—to refuse to be involved in abortion, up to and including refusing to inform a woman where to get one. Similar measures exist in nearly all states, allowing individuals like pharmacists to refuse to dispense not only emergency contraception—which prevents pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex—but even standard birth control pills. Two new anti-abortion bills being considered in Congress are the Child Custody Protection Act, which would make it a federal crime for anyone other than a parent or guardian to take a minor across state lines for an abortion, and the Post-Abortion Depression Research and Care Act. The cynicism of the capitalist class never ceases to amaze: they expect us to believe that in this country, where poor women and their children are thrown off welfare and onto the streets, the rulers are concerned about "protecting children" and women's "depression research and care"! Among those who will be considering the bills are new Senators John Thune of South Dakota, who made opposition to abortion a central theme of his campaign, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has called for the death penalty for abortion doctors—in the name of being "pro-life"!

Coburn's call is no idle threat. Seven abortion doctors and their staff have been murdered by "right-to-life" terrorists in the past 12 years, while clinics and doctors who courageously continue to provide their services have been firebombed, stalked, and threatened. One of the most prominent of these is Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, who has defied repeated mobilizations of the anti-abortion movement by providing late-term abortions to women who would otherwise have nowhere to go, and whose clinic is undoubtedly the main target of the Kansas attorney general's subpoena of abortion records. He has adamantly defended his patients' right to confidential medical care against not only the anti-abortion bigots, but now the state as well.

We honor the doctors and staff who continue to provide abortions despite real physical danger. The courage and basic human decency of such individuals was recently movingly depicted in the movie Vera Drake, which tells the story of a woman in 1950s Britain who defied the ban on abortion to carry out what she saw as her elementary duty to help women in need. The anti-abortion bigots want to bring back the days when abortion was illegal and untold numbers of women were butchered or mutilated by back-alley or self-induced abortions. Nearly 1,700 women died in 1940, and, though the number of deaths declined afterward due to the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, by 1965 nearly 200 women were still dying each year. And these are official figures; reality was far worse.

Unwanted pregnancy is often the result when sex education is replaced with ideologically driven "abstinence only" propaganda—a favorite project of both the Republicans as well as Democrats like the Clintons. Today, 58 percent of all schools in the U.S. have "abstinence only" education, and that percentage is increasing. The programs deliberately foster fear—of AIDS, STDs, pregnancy, cancer, poverty, loneliness, depression, infertility and suicide, among other things— in a futile attempt to get young people to abstain from sex. One "abstinence only" video queries: "What if I want to have sex before I get married?" and answers: "Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die. And you'll probably take your spouse and one or more of your children with you."

And the anti-abortion zealots are inflicting their ignorance and anti-woman arrogance on the rest of the world. Bush observed his first day in office on 22 January 2001 (Roe's anniversary) by reimposing Reagan's global "gag rule," which bans family planning funding to overseas groups that provide abortions or referrals, even if they do so with non-U.S. funds. The Bush administration pushes "abstinence only" propaganda on programs like the United Nations Population Fund and the Reproductive Health for Refugees consortium. The result is to cause death through AIDS as well as unwanted pregnancies among huge numbers of poor women throughout the world, by callously and deliberately depriving them of birth control devices and condoms.

For Women's Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

To varying degrees, feminist organizations like NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Organization for Women have barely uttered a peep of protest over the decades as abortion and other reproductive rights were all but eliminated for poor and black women. This fact reflects their class nature as spokesmen for mostly white, successful, petty-bourgeois women. Most recently, NARAL Pro-Choice America has cravenly dropped its opposition to a grotesque anti-abortion measure being put forward in Congress, dubbed the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act," which would require doctors to offer anesthetic for the fetuses of women seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy!

Such capitulation to anti-abortionists is not new. Newsday (9 February) reported, regarding the passage of last April's "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," that "when anti-abortion groups praised the decision to charge Scott Peterson with murdering his unborn son, abortion rights advocates stayed quiet. Though the move clashed with their conviction that a fetus is not a person, they let the issue pass, apparently fearing a backlash." Squeamishness in the face of the anti-abortion assault was conveyed piquantly in 2003, when NARAL Pro-Choice America observed Roe v. Wade by officially dropping the unpalatable word "abortion" from its name. It reflects the current prevalence of anti-science, anti-woman bigotry that even those who claim to defend abortion shrink from speaking its name.

The International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose Socialist Worker has carried a couple of articles recently centered on "how to defend the right to choose," is calling to take to the streets to defend abortion rights. One such article, "Have Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?" (4 February), concludes that the "anti-choice" forces can be beaten back through actions to defend the clinics, such as took place in the 1990s. We Spartacists took part in such clinic defense, which for a time helped forestall assaults on access to abortion.

Our opposition to the Democratic Party is based on the fact that it is a capitalist party, by definition hostile to the interests of working people and the oppressed. In contrast, the ISO opposes merely the current policies of the Democrats. Thus, while bemoaning the Democrats' rightward plunge on abortion rights, and the feminists' accommodation to that plunge, the ISO's propaganda lacks a call to break with the Democrats. The ISO's calls to take to the streets amount to nothing more than a more militant version of the tactic of pressuring the Democrats. In fact, aiming to push the Democrats to the left is in effect the ISO's program. This is evidenced, for example, by their support to the capitalist politician Ralph Nader for president in 2000 and 2004. Nader's stated purpose in running was to convince the Democrats to move to the left. He called the fight for women's equality "gonadal politics" and raising specific demands against racial discrimination "divisive." In keeping with its desire to appeal to what "pro-choice" Democrats deem possible, the ISO limits itself to calling to "defend the right to choose"—in utter disdain for the fact that this right is meaningless if women have no access to clinics or ability to pay.

The fight for abortion rights mandates that we build a revolutionary workers party, waging a political struggle to break working people from the Democratic Party. The working class has the social power necessary to mobilize in defense of not only women, but all the oppressed. We have no illusions that it will be easy to convey to many workers that they have a stake in defending abortion rights. In this religious country, many workers have been equivocal at best about women's right to abortion. In today's reactionary "moral values" climate it is even more difficult to win workers to the understanding that abortion is not a narrow "women's issue" but a class issue: an essential democratic right, the removal of which would redound against all working people. As we have so often remarked, democratic rights either go forward together or fall back separately. The status of women is inextricably linked to that of the working class, which is uniquely situated to bring capitalist rule, and the basis for women's oppression, to an end. For women's liberation through socialist revolution!