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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2005Woman as ReasonReproductive rights in dangerby Susan Van Gelder and Anne Jaclard Never has women’s right to abortion been in such danger since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade found abortion to be part of the constitutional right to privacy. On April 27, the House passed a bill to limit access to safe abortion for young women; it is likely to pass the Senate and become law. Roe may soon be reversed by new appointees to the Court. The option of a legal abortion was long ago lost to many women due to cost, terror tactics of anti-woman fanatics, and myriad state and federal laws. So it is no surprise that Bush is appeasing his Right-wing Christian base by pushing to end it altogether. What concerns us here is the almost fatalistic capitulation of the leaders of the "pro-choice" movement, who no longer even dare use the word "abortion." Their narrow concept of women’s rights has led them to play into the hands of the radical Right. This is the moment when reproductive rights organizations should be calling women into the streets. We won the right to abortion by mass demonstrations, and we need ever more massive ones to keep it. MARCH FOR WOMEN'S LIVES Last April, a million women demonstrated in Washington for reproductive rights, surprising the organizers and the nation by their diversity and by the breadth and depth of their demands. Instead of building on that march, however, a major national pro-choice organization, NARAL, recently announced a "new" approach: rather than battling the Right, NARAL proposes to work with it to increase women’s access to safe birth control and thereby reduce the need for abortions. This sounds feasible only if the last 30 years of attacks on reproductive rights are ignored and the women’s movement’s own history is forgotten. How far we have traveled since the late 1960s, when the Women’s Liberation Movement burst onto the national and global scenes! Then women sought an end to sexism in all aspects of our lives; safe, legal and free abortion and birth control were among a constellation of issues for which women wanted to make our own decisions. Health care was to be centered on the quality of human life, not the drive for profits by the medical and drug industries. The overriding goal was a woman’s right to control her own body and mind. Philosophical battles raged as the women’s movement grew and gained support from all segments of society. At first, not only mainstream America and the Right but also the Left ignored and denigrated the Women’s Liberation Movement. They tried to represent it as the demands of middle class white women, even as the most profoundly revolutionary ideas were brought forth by African-American and working-class women. We are hobbled by losing this history, especially how Women’s Liberation arose from within and in opposition to Left organizations, redefining and deepening the concept of liberation. That feminist critique came equally from whites and from African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement is a phenomenon greatly under-recognized in today’s retrospectives of that period. Then, like now, those opposed to the movements for freedom of African Americans and women found ways to "divide and mislead" later generations. By the early 1970s, Trotskyist organizations managed to take leadership of the mass movement and narrowed the wealth of ideas and demands to the lowest common denominator--the right to abortion. Women’s demand for free quality heath care for all was given a back seat, along with the many other aspects of the movement. No sooner was abortion legalized than the Right’s successful assaults on it began. The NARAL initiative reveals how the Right now sets the agenda for the pro-choice movement. Although legal abortion was and still is absolutely necessary, abortion has never been anyone’s birth control method of choice. One reason we still have to fight for abortion and birth control is that capitalism has not produced easy, cheap, safe birth control that is also profitable. The Right is well aware that each "tactic" it espouses is just one puzzle piece in its overall reactionary agenda, while most left and women’s groups have not re-thought their agendas. The recent religious-political circus over Terri Schiavo’s right to have her wishes carried out after 15 years, parallels the Right’s play on people’s emotions, so that microscopic embryos are deemed human and people with dead brains must be kept alive. The whole Schiavo affair was a stand-in for women’s right to abortion. Only by misunderstanding this moment in history and capitalist society could NARAL operate as if a rapprochement with the Right were possible. The Right’s ascendancy is the triumph of counter-revolution against the gains made by women, African-American, and other liberation movements. Its agenda is the very opposite of promoting women’s freedom and autonomy. The fight for reproductive rights is one aspect of class struggle against an anti-human society, and NARAL’s ploy disorients people from the tasks we face. MOVEMENT BASED IN HUMAN FREEDOM Our movement would do well to recognize that the right to abortion, or any single issue, is only a transitory aspect of the movement for a human-based society, for the freedom of all people to control our own bodies and lives. We want to create a women’s movement on the ground of human freedom, not from the standpoint of this society, but of a future society based on human needs and development. With that perspective, we can work out a context and meaning for the fight for reproductive rights for all women. We invite others to join in this task. |
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