To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
May 14, 2022
People across the country are demonstrating today in defense of abortion rights. In Seattle, there are two demonstrations: one at Cal Anderson Park on Capital Hill, called by a number of groups including Planned Parenthood and Bans Off Our Bodies. The other is at Seattle Central College Plaza, called by Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. Below is the text of Seattle Workers’ Voice, vol 6, #2, which was written for today’s women’s rights actions.
On May 2nd, a draft opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was leaked. It revealed the thinking of at least a part of the Court majority: that Roe v Wade was “egregiously wrong from the start”, and suggested that rights that are not explicitly spelled out in the constitution aren't protected.
Alito's draft presents a false history of a supposed “unbroken
tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment
persist[ing] from the earliest days of the common law until 1973”. The
draft talks as though today, it is nothing to carry a pregnancy
to term, and if the child isn't wanted, to give it up for
adoption. It talks as though everybody has medical insurance and
maternity leave, which when it does exist is almost always
unpaid. Most working people and poor don't have these, and
couldn't afford to stop working for any extended time anyway. It also
talks as though it's no big deal to live 9 months with an
unwanted pregnancy, and then drop a newborn baby off anonymously or put
it up for adoption. It even notes grotesquely that there's a
“domestic shortage in supply of [newborn white] infants” for adoption,
as if the issue is a “supply chain problem” with women as a
baby-factory assembly line.
Women need the freedom to choose if and when they start a family, to make sure their economic and relationship life is okay, that they're ready and want to have a child. And for working-class and poor women, this is all the more important because there's often no cushion or family safety net to fall back on.
Roe was decided by a majority Republican- appointed Court. The
context was 1973 and the women's liberation movement was at a
high point. It was strengthened by ties to the other major
movements of the period: struggles for workers rights, civil
rights, gay rights, the anti-Vietnam War struggle, the environmental
struggle. It was also strengthened by the recognition that
working-class and poor women suffer the most from restrictions on
rights to abortion and contraception. In every realm, including these
basic reproductive rights, the working class made progress due to
its fighting spirit.
Since then the left-wing movement has died down, providing the opening for the ruling class to step up their attacks on all the gains we made. The religious right-wing has been leading the charge against all reproductive rights – sex education, contraception, abortion – and their main rallying cry has been overturning Roe v Wade. Every Republican President since Reagan has made overturning Roe a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees, and the GOP even made up rules to allow themselves to block a vote on Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, giving Trump the opportunity to put abortion foe Neil Gorsuch on the bench.
And they've been eroding abortion rights wherever they can at
the state level, passing onerous laws, imposing waiting periods and
subjecting women to lying “counseling” about the supposed
psychological risks of abortion, and shutting down clinics to
force women to travel long distances. It's estimated that half of
all states are certain or likely to ban abortion if/when Roe is
overturned (1).
The right-wing also pens tortured “think” pieces on whether it
is moral for women to have abortions in cases of rape, incest,
fetal deformities, or when the mother's health is endangered. They
usually conclude just what they set out to prove: that
abortion is never justified. Such disgusting arrogance! Who are
they to claim the right stick their noses into women's private business
like this?! They even pretend they're going to support poor
women with pre- and post-natal funding and other programs. Right,
they're suddenly going to stop their long history of cutting any
and all social programs they can get their hands on.
In the face of this onslaught by the right, what has the Democratic
Party done? They've appeased and sought compromise with the
Republicans. They repeatedly promised a national law codifying
the right to an abortion, but never fought for it; declaring it
“not a priority” and more important to “focus on those areas that
we can agree on” (Obama), tossing protecting abortion rights into
the corner. The Democrats love to pose as friend of the
working class, but when a right that most affects working
women is on the table they're complacent – the ruling class can
always fly their daughters and wives off somewhere to get safe
and skilled abortion services, so it's “not a priority”.
It is working class and poor women who benefit most from
having control over their reproductive lives, including through
science-based sex education, access to contraception, and the right to
abortion on demand and without having to justify it to anyone
or pass any barriers – just like any other medical
procedure. It is working women, and the working class as a whole,
who must fight vigorously and militantly for these rights.
There have already been angry, militant protests across the
country, and protesters have demonstrated outside the six
right-wing justices homes. Now there is a national day of protest
called for May 14.
This motion must continue. Regardless of what happens to Roe v
Wade, the reactionary anti-abortion laws that many states have enacted
need to be abolished. And the right-wingers will continue
to push for more reactionary laws, which need to be fought.
And it looks likely that the Supreme Court will strike down Roe,
which means that abortions will immediately be banned in multiple
states, and the anti-abortion fanatics will continue to work
to increase that number. They also want to pass laws that
ban getting abortion pills through the mail, ban traveling from
no-abortion states to seek an abortion where they are legal, and
after Roe, they're planning to pass a federal law banning
abortion across the nation. And they have always had their sights
set on contraception and sex education, too – including
education about safe sex practices for people of all sexual
orientations – so our fight must be toward protecting these
rights as well.
Thus, the present movement must continue and be further organized.
(1) https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2021/10/26-states-are-certain-or-likely-ban-abortion-without-roe-heres-which-ones-and-why
Seattle Workers’ Voice, May 14, 2022, seattle.com.sg@gmail.com
Picture: Pro-choice demonstration in Washington, D.C., May 14, 2022.
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