July 3, 1970 AUSTIN - A U.S. district court in Dallas ruled June 17 that the Texas abortion laws are unconstitutional because "the fundamental right of single women and married persons to choose whether to have children is protected by the Ninth Amendment through the Fourteenth Amendment." The court also ruled that the Texas abortion laws are "unconstitutionally overbroad."
While abortion laws in other states have been declared unconstitutional for various causes, the Texas ruling is the first to assert that women have a basic right to control their own childbearing functions.
Women's liberation activists across the state had supported the case, through petitioning, informational fact sheets and picketing in support of the case at the Dallas courthouse. Members of women's liberation groups were generally pleased at the ruling, but disappointed that an injunction against the enforcement of the unconstitutional law was denied.
June 30, 1945 The recent death of eight Mexican track workers who were crushed beneath the wheels of an express train on the New York Central Railroad at Amsterdam, N.Y. brings to light the brutal methods employed by U.S. capitalism in the exploitation of foreign labor.
None of the eight workers could understand English. They were put to work on a two-track system which they did not understand. There was no foreman present and no watchers had been posted to warn of oncoming trains. No interpreter had been assigned to the gang. An investigation followed the "accident." A charge of criminal negligence was considered, but the coroner, John W. Morris, issued a statement saying that the evidence found was "carelessness!"
These eight workers were part of a contingent of 60,000 track workers and 40,000 farmhands sent to work in the U.S. as the result of a deal between the U.S. Department of Labor and the Mexican government. Another 35,000 men will be sent in "batches," according to a report issued by officials in Mexico City who added, "This total of 150,000 Mexican workers will be returned to their homes as soon as the labor shortage in the United States is relieved by returning soldiers."
These Mexican workers, recruited by promises of high wages and good living and working conditions, are forced to do the most difficult and dangerous work without protection of either union organization or State and Federal laws covering the conditions of labor.
Truly capitalism squeezes every ounce of "value" out of these exploited workers from South of the Border. What a glorious day of reckoning will come when the workers and poor farmers of Mexico and the United States join in solidarity for united struggle against capitalism!