However, the fourth paragraph of the editorial, which describes how Roe v. Wade was won, says: “Like the defeat of Jim Crow segregation against Blacks—a victory won through a mass movement of working people—the Roe v. Wade decision was secured through massive protests of men and women in the streets.” I think readers of the Militant, especially young people like my co-workers, many of whom were born long after 1973, would get the impression that the Roe v. Wade decision was a result of a movement analogous to or comparable to the civil rights movement. This isn’t accurate.

I would encourage Militant readers to review the article, “The Abortion Struggle: What Have We Accomplished, Where Should We Go from Here?” by Betsey Stone and Mary-Alice Waters in Part III of the Education for Socialists series on Communist Continuity and the Fight for Women’s Liberation, available from www.pathfinderpress.com.

Stone and Waters explain the main factors which led to the Supreme Court decision: the changing position of women in society and the disparity between their actual position and the possibilities opened by new technology and wealth; the impact of the Black struggle and other struggles for social change, including the rise of the women’s liberation movement itself, of which the abortion rights struggle was a part; and other factors.

They explain that the “Supreme Court decision was handed down before either the feminist movement or the abortion rights movement had reached a stage of mobilizing large numbers of women.” In the section, “Balance Sheet of the Abortion Campaign,” they explain why “no massive mobilizations on the abortion question developed.”

There was a real campaign to legalize abortion, which included some street demonstrations, lawsuits, teach-in-type events, and other activities. But these never developed into a mass movement anywhere near the scale or depth of the civil rights movement, although the Black struggle certainly had a profound impact on and deeply conditioned the emerging women’s liberation movement.

Susan LaMont
Birmingham, Alabama

See ‘How abortion was decriminalized: Lessons of abortion rights struggle’  
 
 
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